The US Congress sent a notice to Live Nation, the organiser and promoter of Travis Scott‘s Astroworld concert which witnessed the death of 10 people due to a crowd surge, and sought information on the planning of the festival, on Wednesday.
The Committee of Oversight and Reform, in a statement addressed to Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino, wrote, “Concert attendees have provided firsthand accounts of being crushed within the crowd as it surged towards the stage,” and held Live Nation responsible for “planning, staffing, putting up money, securing permits, finding vendors, communicating with local agencies,” for the festival.
Live Nation is required to submit written answers to the committee’s queries, by January 7 next year. A session is scheduled five days later which will be centered around Astroworld as well as earlier events organised by the company.
The company is directed to submit security and crowd details with pre-show security assessment records, responses to the management of unruly crowd, and the policies on medical care among others. It also noted that the organiser withheld the payments of Astroworld employees until they signed revised contracts.
Scott’s Astroworld concert was held on November 5, and witnessed a footfall of 50,000 people.
A stampede followed and crushed attendees after the crowd surged towards the stage, the statement noted.
The incident left 10 dead, eight of whom died the night of the event. It also left multiple people injured. While Indian-American student Bharti Shahani succumbed to her injuries on November 11, 9-year-old Ezra Blount became the youngest victim on November 15.
The statement further quoted multiple reports with attendees as eyewitnesses, as well as expert voices which indicated a clear failure on the management’s part.
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“The police activity log shows that, by 9:38 p.m., Houston Police officers and firefighters responded to reports of a “mass casualty event.”8 Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña stated that after local law enforcement received the initial reports of people sustaining injuries in the crowd, “our people stepped up and immediately went to the producers and told them, ‘Hey, people are going down,'” the notice read.
It added that the concert was not halted until after 10 p.m., despite the rapper’s stand that he “did stop a couple times just to make sure everybody was okay.”
Both Scott and Live Nation have been slapped with hundreds of lawsuits alleging negligence and misconduct. An online petition followed on change.org that sought to remove the rapper from music festivals after his concert in Houston.
In the light of the legal battle that Scott is embroiled in, he was recently removed from the lineup of the North American festival Coachella.