by Daniel Sullivan
Tragedy struck during Travis Scott´s Astroworld Concert in Houston, Texas. On November 5th, just after 9 AM, concert-goers had breached the entrance, these violent stampedes repeated eight times resulting in serious injuries and a total of nine deaths.
Nine year old, Ezra Blount sadly couldn’t recover from the intense crushing of the crowd. On his father’s shoulder, a huge crowd trampled them. Ezra’s father was unconscious and Ezra was placed in a medically induced coma. More deaths followed with one being 14, another 16, two being 21, one 22, two 23, and one was 27 years old. It wasn’t just deaths, however. 300 people in all received medical attention, with 25 hospitalized. Madeline Eskins, a nurse who attended the concert reported to CNN, “I passed out because people were pushing up against me so much that I couldn’t breathe.” By the time more people had come in, she said, “I had constant pressure on my chest.”
This disaster affects more than just Scott. Although he is being sued for negligence by those attending the concert and one of the victim’s families, so is Drake the Canadian rapper. Apparently he encouraged the chaos in the concert, and the mayhem in the crowd continued. Scott has worked with Nike several times in developing sneakers, but out of respect for those dead or injured a launch of sneakers has been postponed. His line of shoes are so popular with sneakerheads and resellers that many shops have stopped selling them all together to prevent too much craze. So what can be done to stop disasters like this in the future?
Well, first off, it is important that both the audience and those on stage must be vigilant of those around them, especially with so many people. Also, huge concerts like this should gradually let people in, rather than packing fifty-thousand people at once. One thing we can all agree on is that no one should ever have to be hospitalized or killed at an event that is meant to be fun and exciting.
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