The time is 1pm, on November 5th, 2021. Excited fans flood through the gates of Astro World, eager to see artist, Travis Scott, and many more, perform live on stage. Little did they know, concert goers would be met with their worst nightmare, some fans even calling it “the concern from hell.” 

At around 9:30, when Jaques Webster, professionally known as Travis Scott, takes the stage, and chaos begins to unravel. According to Sam Pena, the Huoston fire chief, the crowd, “for whatever reason began to push and surge towards the front of the stage, which caused the people in the front to be compressed.” Suddenly, you are in a sea of strangers, touching cheek to cheek, able to see only the night sky above you. 

Friends Kaia Redus and Zachary Scott go on to describe their experience in an article for Fox 26 as, “There were people passed out on the ground and you were getting pushed over them and then you’d trip and you’d get trampled over and people were screaming, screaming for help.” The teenagers go onto explain how, “Everybody was squished. I mean your ribs were getting crushed.” Unfortunately, this mob, or rage went on for an hour set. Many fans, and the general public upset over Webster’s reaction to the situation. Videos have surfaced online of the rapper telling the crowd, “You know what you came here to do.”

By the end of the night, no one left without feeling traumatized. The latest update, given to CNN from fire chief Pena was that there was, “Twenty-three people were taken to hospitals, and eight of them died. One patient is 10 years old, and at last check was in critical condition.”

Unfortunately this was not the first time that a concert led to mass casualties. Back in 2017, famous pop singer Ariana Grande held a concert at Britain’s Manchester Arena as apart of her Dangerous Woman tour. Towards the end of the night, Salman Abedi detonated a bomb which killed 22 concertgoers and injured hundreds more – many of which were children.

Karen Ford, who was present at the event, described her experience as, “just chaos.” She went on to the explain how she “was trying to tell people to calm down.” She said the masses of people trying to flee created a similar situation to the 2021 Astro World Fest: “We were being crushed.”

Although these concerts seem to have a lot of similarities, one being that both concerts were promoted by Live Nation, there is a huge difference: the singers’ reaction. Ariana Grande paid for all funeral expenses for the victims of the bombing. The pop artist also hosted a benefit concert titled: “One Love Manchester” which raised about $12.9 million dollars for the special fund to help the victims’ medical expenses and more. So far from Travis Scott, all we have is video statement of him rubbing his head on Twitter. 

So the questions still remain, what will the singer do to accommodate to those who fell victim to the stampede at his concert? And what will Scott, and possibly other artists do to improve security and safety at future concerts?