HOUSTON, Texas: At least eight people died and scores of people were injured after a crowd surge on the opening night of a music festival in Houston on Friday.
Panic broke out after the crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage at the Astroworld Festival, emergency officials said.
Eleven people were taken to hospitals in cardiac arrest and eight died.
About 300 people were treated for injuries such as cuts and bruises at the event, attended by 50,000 people at NRG Park. A second day of concerts planned for Saturday was cancelled, organiser Live Nation said.
The incident began around 9.15pm local time while rapper Travis Scott, who originated the annual festival three years ago, was performing, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.
“The crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage, and people began to panic,” he told reporters.
As the crush began causing injuries to people, the panic grew.
“We had at least eight confirmed fatalities tonight and scores of individuals that were injured,” the sheriff said. “We transported 17 patients to the hospital. … Eleven of those that were transported were in cardiac arrest.”
Organisers halted the concert when it was apparent that many people had been hurt, but the sheer scale of the casualties quickly overwhelmed the existing medical facilities, the fire chief added.
Video footage showed ambulances making their way through the crowd. Other clips showed paramedics performing CPR on people in the crowd, while the performance continued.
As the sun rose in Houston on Saturday, the scene outside the stadium was quiet. A few flashing lights and signs by the roadside declared “Astroworld cancelled”.
At a hotel across the street from the stadium, officials had set up a “reunification centre” for victims’ families. Police said that a “trickle” of families had come through so far, and that they expected more to arrive as people begin waking up and seeing the news of what had happened.
Accounts on social media, which could not immediately be verified, described people gasping for breath in the crush of the crowd during the event and calls for help going unheeded. Videos showed one person climbing up onto a riser, where a cameraman was working, and calling for the performance to stop, shouting that people were dying; other people can be heard insulting him and telling him to “calm down”.
Investigators said they had not yet reviewed video from the concert but that Live Nation had promised them access to it.
Officials said there had been an earlier crowd surge at the entrance to the festival, as crowds broke down barricades to enter the grounds, but it seemed to be unrelated to the chaotic events that unfolded later.
It was not yet clear what caused the disaster.
“I think it’s very important that none of us speculate. Nobody has all the answers tonight,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said. “If you don’t have facts, if you don’t have evidence, I’m not going to speak against that. We have hurting families out here.”
Finner added that the organisers and Scott were both cooperating with police.
Live Nation and Astroworld did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It happened all at once. It seemed like it just happened … over the course of just a few minutes,” said Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite.
“Suddenly we had several people down on the ground, experiencing some type of cardiac arrest or some type of medical episode.”
The Houston Chronicle said Scott stopped multiple times during his 75-minute performance when he spotted fans in distress near the front of the stage.
He asked security to make sure they were okay and help them out of the crowd. Emergency vehicles, lights and alarms flashing, cut through the crowds several times.
“(It’s) obviously a very extremely tragic night. Our hearts are broken,” Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo said.
“Tonight’s focus though needs to be on the families and on the lives that we’ve lost. Many of them extremely young, tragically young.”
Astroworld was created by Scott and launched in 2018. The 29-year-old rapper, who has a child with celebrity socialite Kylie Jenner, made his breakthrough in 2013 and has had six Grammy nominations.
During Scott’s headline set late Friday, he was joined onstage by the Canadian rap superstar Drake.
Video taken earlier in the day shows chaotic scenes as crowds broke down barricades to enter the Astroworld festival grounds at NRG Park in Houston.