The on-site investigator at the deadly 1979 Who concert said that festival seating and crowd density may have contributed to the Astroworld tragedy.
When concert safety consultant Paul Wertheimer first saw video from Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston, where at least eight people died Friday during a crowd surge in Scott’s set, his conclusion was based on decades of experience.
Wertheimer has been leading the charge for concert safety since 1979, when he was an on-site investigator the night 11 people were trampled to death at a Cincinnati concert by the Who. He compiled the post-concert report on the failings, including festival seating, that led to the deaths, and across the next four decades has advocated for crowd safety measures through his company Crowd Management Strategies.
Wertheimer said that barriers, which he describes as “like a reef that you put in the ocean to break up the waves,” can be effective, but not always. The Roskilde Festival used barriers to break up the crowd, he explains. “If you overcrowd a place, people can get crushed in between. It’s not necessarily going to work if you’re not taking other precautions.”
“There are a lot of questions that still need to be answered,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, stating that 528 police officers were assigned to the concert, “plus 755 security guards provided by Live Nation.”
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