Why Again?

By Professor Joe Goldblatt

How to Finally Prevent the Future Death of Young People at Events

Eight young people are dead and hundreds more have been severely injured during a music festival in Houston, Texas on November 5, 2021. As a scholar and former producer in the field of planned events, I am concerned that once again greed and weak legislation has led to this preventable disaster.

There is a long distinguished history of scholarship in the field of crowd control at live events. As early as 66 AD there is recorded history of the death of 10,000 Jews during a stampede by pilgrims during Passover when the emperor Flavius Josephus made rude remarks and gestures. In more recent history, in 1979, a concert by The Who at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio led to a crowd crush and the death of 11 people. Closer to home, the Ibrox and Hillsborough disasters in 1971 and 1989 caused hundreds of injuries and in the latter case, nearly 100 deaths.

I have some personal experience with death as a result of crowd crushes. In 2003, I was the Dean of a University in Providence, Rhode Island when I read in the newspaper of the overnight death of 100 young people who perished during The Station Nightclub Fire. Most of these young people died at the front door of the venue as they tried to exit and were stampeded by the rest of the guests.

The Governor of Rhode Island appointed me to chair a committee to investigate how these tragedies could be avoided in the future. My committee recommended that all future events must incorporate better exit signs (including posting those at floor level so that if the venue filled with smoke and people were forced to crawl they could still see the signs and find the exits) and an audio announcement notifying the guests of the location of the fire exits be made prior to the start of each event.

Therefore, when I witnessed the televised news clips of the deaths of eight young people between the ages of 18 and 27 in Houston, I become angry and despondent. Since the beginning of 2001, there have been over 50 major catastrophes resulting in thousands of deaths caused by crowd crushing at events throughout the world. Surely by now we should have learned how to prevent these avoidable disasters?

I believe that both local government who have the statutory responsibility to provide public safety, and the commercial event organisers are complicit in the errors and omissions that have led to these disasters. Local government must enact more stringent legislation that requires increased advance scrutiny of event planning procedures and stronger penalties including major fines and long term imprisonment for unscrupulous organisers.

The event organisers have the legal duty to provide a safe and secure experience for their guests. Many of these guests at music festivals are often not fully in command of their senses due to alcohol, drugs or simply the euphoria of the event itself. Therefore, detailed advance crowd control planning and adequate on-sight staffing is even more important than at other large crowd events.

I cannot understand how after the tragedy in 1979, that led to the dramatically reduced use and often banning of festival seating, how I could witness thousands of young people rushing toward a stage and being crushed by thousands more who followed them. The scene from the concert reminded me of John Martin’s 1841 painting of Hell entitled Pandemonium. He based his painting on John Milton’s masterwork Paradise Lost. In Martin’s dooms day painting an armoured Satan raises his arms as he calls unseen rebel angels to action.

I believe it is now time to call our better angels to action to finally prevent these avoidable catastrophes in the future. I recommend the following changes be implemented as soon as possible to protect and preserve human life.

• First, we must ban all future festival seating. Festival seating allows guests to stand in an open area, often scrambling to get as close to the stage as possible.

• Secondly, we must increase the stewarding requirements and number of highly trained personnel for each future event.

• Thirdly, we must improve the use of signs and audio announcements at events to promote better crowd control.

• Fourth, we must only allow ingress and egress to and from the venue in carefully staged groups of smaller and more manageable number of guests.

• Fifth and finally, we must enact a zero-tolerance policy for event organisers who fail to produce and execute a crowd control written plan that meets or exceeds the standard of care that is their duty within the jurisdiction where their event is being conducted.

These catastrophes are preventable. It is immoral and illegal to continue to tolerate this egregious behaviour. Therefore, I am calling for the events management industry and local government leaders to immediately work more closely together and call upon their better angels in preventing this horrific Armageddon from returning again.

Professor Joe Goldblatt is Emeritus Professor of Planned Events at Queen Margaret University. He has produced hundreds of events in his career and has served as an expert witness and consultant for dozens of events where tragedy occurred due to errors and omissions in the planning and permitting process. To learn more about his views about live events visit www.joegoldblatt.scot.

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