Ultra Returning To Miami On Heels Of Astroworld Festival Tragedy

By Emily Cardenas, the Miami Times

Nov 9, 2021

The tragedy at Houston's, sold out Astroworld Festival that left eight dead and hundreds more injured last Friday is a wake-up call about safety and security at Miami’s upcoming Ultra Music Festival.

In 2014, a mob of people pushed down a gate near Ultra, trampling a female security guard from Contemporary Services Corporation (CSC) which resulted in head trauma and a broken leg. She was just one of several hundred people treated by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue that night. According to published reports, 51 of those people sustained serious injuries and 15 were transported to the hospital. The event came back the following year.

Now Ultra is scheduled to return to Miami's Bayfront Park March 25-27, 2022, after a four-year absence. The pandemic and opposition from condo residents prevented the festival's comeback until now.

City of Miami Police are in the throes of planning for Ultra now and don't want to see what happened at Astroworld repeated here.

“In light of what we saw happen at the concert in Houston, we plan to be in contact with organizers and promoters of any music or large events in the City of Miami to find alternative measures to make sure that those performing, the officers, and the public are safe,” said City of Miami Police PIO Michael Vega.

Vega also said City of Miami PD is rethinking its approach to all large-scale events to include added security measures, such as more fencing, augmenting with private security, patrolling event exteriors, possibly using drone surveillance and placing officers in non-disclosed locations.

In 2019, then Miami City Commissioner Keon Hardemon sponsored a resolution to negotiate Ultra's return to Bayfront Park, which narrowly won in a 3-2 commission vote. Part of the negotiation that followed involved capping daily capacity at 55,000. Organizers boasted a total attendance of 165,000 people from more than 60 countries in 2017.

The Astroworld Festival at NRG Park in Houston, headlined by rapper Travis Scott, had an estimated 50,000 people in attendance. At least eight people between the ages of 14-27 were killed during a crowd surge when people started rushing the stage. Concertgoers reported being compressed and suffocated before passing out. Survivors who temporarily fell to the ground reported being callously trampled over by others who they say cared little for the injured and dying below them as the concert continued.

“All of a sudden, your ribs are being crushed. You have someone’s arm in your neck. You’re trying to breathe but you can’t … said Niaara Goods, 28, who traveled from New York to Texas for the concert to celebrate a friend's birthday. “Some people are laughing at us – those who are screaming to get out. Because they thought it was funny. They didn’t realize it was terror.”

Goods told The Associated Press she was so desperate to get out that she bit a man on the shoulder to get him to move. After getting to safety, she saw the injured in gurneys or in wheelchairs.

“It was literally the scariest night of my life. I literally thought I was going to die trying to get out. That’s just not what you pay for,” she said. More than 300 people were treated at a field hospital at the concert.

The people collapsing and dying went on for more than 30 minutes while some fans screamed for the concert to be stopped.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said his department noticed attendees “going down” at 9:30 p.m. and immediately notified concert organizers. The event was called off 40 minutes later after discussions that included the fire department and officials with NRG Park.

Finner defended the amount of time it took for the event to be halted.

“You cannot just close when you’ve got 50,000 – over 50,000 – individuals, OK?” he said. “We have to worry about rioting – riots – when you have a group that’s that young.”

Laurick Ingram, co-owner and manager of LAI Global Investigations in Miami, disagrees. He says the first 90 seconds in any situation like this is critical. Ingram's company offers security consulting services, and he himself is a former police sergeant who was involved in the planning and execution of security for countless major events during his 27 years with Miami-Dade PD.

“As soon as you know somebody is hurt, everything has to stop … the faster information travels the faster people can respond. Time matters. Seconds matter,” said Ingram, who deploys a method to event security he’s dubbed “COPPER,” an acronym for communication, outline, perimeter, establish and resources.

Ingram explains that you must first establish an adequate communication chain to quickly send information up and down to provide quick reaction in a crisis – like having to shut down a concert audio system and engage the person on stage to calm a crowd. He says that an area of danger must be outlined, an inner and outer perimeter for the event must be clear, a command post should be established and a responsible person identified to be in charge “if something does sideways,” and there always needs to be enough resources on the ground.

Finner announced at a news conference Saturday that 528 officers were present at the deadly concert that night, in addition to 755 private security officers hired by Live Nation, one of the companies behind the festival. Contemporary Services Corp., headquartered in Los Angeles, was responsible for security staff at the festival, according to county records in Texas. The company advertises online as being “recognized worldwide as the pioneer, expert and only employee-owned company in the crowd management field.”

Investigators in Houston are now combing through security camera footage provided by Live Nation. The police investigation is involving both homicide and narcotic divisions, says Finner. Authorities say that among other things, they also will look at how the area around the stage was designed, and the use of safety barriers and crowd control methods used. Some audience members said barricades erected near the stage and to separate different sections of ticket holders prevented fans from escaping.

Ingram notes that all major events require a fire inspection where a sufficient number of appropriately placed emergency exists are looked for.

“Emergency exits are important. When you have that kind of mass together, if somebody starts pushing and there isn't enough clearance between people there needs to be a way out.” Ingram also says positioning enough security near danger zones, like mosh pits, is important, so immediate action can be taken when necessary.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called the disaster “a tragedy on many different levels” and said it was too early to draw conclusions about what went wrong.

A local official has suggested an independent review of the tragedy for the sake of transparency and experts in crowd safety say an investigation by neutral outsiders could help the city avoid potential conflicts of interest.

According to The Associated Press, Scott’s high-energy performances are known for being chaotic and raucous.

“Travis Scott’s whole aesthetic is about rebellion,” said HipHopDX editor-in-chief Trent Clark, who has attended several of his performances. “The shows have a lot of raging. With the death of punk rock, hip-hop has indeed adopted and patterned the new generation of mosh pits. It’s not uncommon to see a lot of crowding and raging or complete wild behavior at a Travis Scott show.”

In a tweet posted Saturday, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated by what took place.” He pledged to work “together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”

Live Nation announce that all concertgoers will be provided full refunds and Scott, who founded the Astroworld Festival, said he would cover funeral costs for the victims.

In 2017, Scott was arrested after he encouraged fans to bypass security and rush the stage, leaving a security guard, a police officer and several others injured during a concert in Arkansas. In a separate 2015 incident, he was sentenced to one year of court supervision after pleading guilty to reckless conduct when Chicago officials said Scott encouraged fans to vault security barricades at the Lollapalooza music festival. No one was injured.

On video posted to social media, Scott could be seen stopping the Friday night concert at one point and asking for aid for someone in the audience: “Security, somebody help real quick.” But then his performance continued.

No matter where the investigation ultimately leads, tragedies like the one at the Astroworld Festival have been happening for a long time. In 1979, 11 people died in a scramble to enter a Cincinnati, Ohio, concert by The Who. At a soccer stadium in England, a human crush in 1989 led to nearly 100 deaths, and the list goes on.

Scott's scheduled headlining performance at the Day N Vegas Festival this weekend has been canceled. Any future performance involving him will likely come under some scrutiny for crowd control measures and other safety concerns.

Visitors cast shadows at a memorial to the victims of the Astroworld concert in Houston Nov. 7, 2021.

(AP Photo/Robert Bumsted)

“Concert promoters pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for security at both private and public (events),” said Noah Shachtman, editor-in-chief at Rolling Stone, to the AP. “That’s got to be deployed properly. Or else, we’re going to see another one of these incidents.”

Indeed, the lawsuits against Live Nation for the tragedy that unfolded in Houston have already begun.

“My heart and prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones,” said Ingram. “I can't imagine sending my teenage son off to a concert and getting a call like that afterward … I can't imagine what that feels like.”

The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.