Travis Tragedy, Who is to Blame?

Editorial Team

Multiple people are to be blamed in response to the Astroworld tragedy. Blaming one person wouldn’t be fair. The main parties at fault are Live Nation, with their poor security, the event goers/fans, sneaking in and causing havoc, as well as the headline performer, being ignorant to the ongoing emergency, leading to the dangerous situation that occured.

In Houston, Texas on November 5th, 2021, ten people died due to suffocation at the Astroworld Festival in NRG park, where the African American rap artist Travis Scott had a concert. Eight of the victims died the night of the disturbance and two of them the day after in the hospital. The horrific incident was caused by there being an overload of people who began to fall on top of one another. 

Live Nation is the organization responsible for planning the Astroworld event, and by looking at this poor preparation, it is clear that it didn’t do its job well. The main artist’s presence and his previous actions have a widely known history of inciting chaos and violence from his fans at his concerts. With such knowledge, it would have been expected that the organizers would take various precautions in the event a disaster breaks out as it did. Live nation is an event company and organizer experienced enough to know what steps should have been taken when dealing with a high energy artist like Travis Scott. 

Where security’s main priority should have been to keep an eye on the crowd’s density, they were left confused and bombarded with little to no training given to them. Unable to keep the fans that snuck in under control, because Live Nation didn’t train them well, occurrences such as a riot or a crowd surge are more prone to happen.

Due to the lack of security at the Astroworld concert there wasn’t much security on the entries to stop the fans from sneaking inside. If there was more supervision they could have stopped many fans who entered the concert. The fans are at fault for pushing pass and sneaking into the concert because they add to the number and with that increase, they leave less space and limit the movement of the fans. This will cause an increase to the risk of other fans bumping into each other, causing people to fall and leading to trampling.

Travis Scott has been arrested two times for inciting riots and disorderly conduct that caused severe injuries to people in the crowds at his shows. He tried to continue his concert while everything was going on. Even though Travis stopped his concert when he was told later on, and made an apology for all the families of the loved ones that passed away, the slow responsiveness to the chaos is inexcusable. There have been many instances where other artists have stopped their performances to get people on their feet and keep them safe, so there should be no reason Travis couldn’t do the same.