In 1969 the biggest known festival Woodstock was peacefull and many other festivals, large and small are well organised so people can have fun but there are exceptions. Some festivals went terribly go wrong do to some events...
Woodstock '99 (July 22 to July 25, 1999, Rome, New-York)
Just like Woodstock '69 and in 1994 Woodstock '94 the original organisaters wanted to make a big peacefull festival with a duration of 3 days and more than 250 thousand people at an abandun military base in Rome, New-York. But things went out of hand.
First of all the line-up of artists made the audience agressive. The lack of hygienic facilities was horrible, It was verry hot weather and the prices of water went into the sky as if supplys ran out. The price for a bottle of water went from day one at 3 dollar to 8 dollar in 3 days. Also the price for food went crazy. Than the waterpipes where smashed because people were tursty and angry, so 'fresh' water could escape near the toilets, everything was muddy and mixes with fecies of the toilets, people at that time didn't realise that the mud was full of fecies and went diving in the mud to cool off. Also garbage wasn't managed properly. All the garbage stayed where people left it. Everyting was becoming smelly and unplaisant.
At some performances people went crazy. On the first day Korn was playing the people went crazy and a bit agressive, the energy comming from the stage was strange and a bit fearfull . The second day when Limp Bisket was playing and whipped up the people, they became more agressive and many people got hurt in the moshpits, if the singer spook some agressive senctence, people where hurt and some wanted to take over a music control tower in the middle of scene. Luckely everthing went a bit calm. That evening, in the Rave area when Fatboy Slim performed his DJ set, a van was driven in, right in the middle of the stage, stolen bu some angry men. The DJ was evacuated and the set was closed after a while.
Do to the lack of organisation, almost no security, there was a sence of complete freedom and chaos, With higher prices for water and food, the enormeaus heat on a square with no shadow and the lack of sleep people where pisted and became more violent. Some people teared down the art panels of the fences, at that point other people, who otherwise never would come agressive, did their part. The mood of the people where getting grimmer by the hour. But everything went good according to the organizers, and indeed eveything went good at the VIP places and behind the scenes, except for the people on the big open field under the heat without shadow.
The third day, at the last performance by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the audience where given candles, the organisation tought it would be a peacefull end when thousands of candles where held up in the air at the end of the festival. But when The Red Hot Chilli Pepers performed their last song 'fire', massive fires where started in the middle of the scene. After a while everything went gremmy because some the big fires could not been reached by the fire department. People then got more and more agressive because of the mixture of the head, high prices, no sleep, alcohol and agressive music. They set many things on fire. They looted every tent that had CD's and TMT's. Everything when down into pieces. A total destruction of the field took place. After a while the police statement came to fix the situation and evacuate the people. At the following morning the last people went home and an enormous havoc was seen like never before. After the end 2 people where dead, many where injured and many victims of sexual violence where reported. The legacy of Woodstock was teared down. The Woodstock festival was never organised again.
Pukkelpop 2011 (Kiewit, Hasselt, Belgium)
On Thursday 18 August 2011, the skies opened above the festival ground of Pukkelpop in Kiewit near Hasselt in Limburg, causing chaos across the country and leaving five people dead.
Pukkelpop – the name referring to a type of spot on the skin, like an acne spot – was founded in 1985 at a location far from its present home, and lasted only one day. It has since grown to become the second-largest music festival in Belgium after Rock Werchter and attracts audiences, many of them well past the acne stage of life, from all over the continent.
But on the evening of 18 August 2011, a thunderstorm broke over the festival ground on the event’s first evening. Tents were carried off by the wind, electricity pylons and giant screens were toppled, lights went out.
Festival guests who had been planning to spend the night on the campground found themselves without shelter, their clothes and belongings soaked by torrential rain, their friends and companions nowhere to be found.
To make matters worse, the sudden spike in telephone traffic overcrowded network capacity. The young people could not contact their worried parents and vice versa and the traffic also slowed the operations of emergency services.
As a direct result, the emergency services would later create their own network for internal communication.
Communications moved on to Twitter, which resulted in a mass movement of local people from Genk and Hasselt mobilising to provide aid to those stranded possessionless. Those giving aid also helped put victims in touch with their families, as well as providing food, blankets, and a warm place to stay until something could be done.
In the end, five people died, including one man who died several days later. Hundreds more reported injuries caused by flying debris, falling trees, and equipment.
The organisers of the event announced the festival would be put on hold while the situation was assessed. But the very next day the entire festival was cancelled.
'Pukkelpop is in deep mourning,...' the organisers said in a statement.
On Pukkelpop 2014, the 12th august, two days befort eh start of the festival the clubtent collapsed because of a a short heavy storm, there were no casualties.
The festival is still organized every year, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to the corona pandemic.
Fyre Festival (April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, Great Exuma, Bahamian island)
The Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival founded by con artist Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent to promote a music talent booking app for their company Fyre Media. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.
The event was promoted on Instagram by social media influencers and models including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski, many of whom did not initially disclose they had been paid. During the inaugural weekend, the event encountered problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services, and artist relations; it was postponed indefinitely and eventually cancelled. Instead of the luxury villas and gourmet meals for which festival attendees paid hundreds or thousands of dollars, they received boxed plain cheese sandwiches and FEMA/UN tents as their accommodation.
In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud to defraud investors and ticket holders, and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor that occurred while out on bail. In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit US$26 million. The organizers became the subject of at least eight lawsuits, several seeking class action status, and one seeking more than $100 million in damages. The cases accused the organizers of defrauding ticket buyers.
Glastonbury Festival 1990 (Pilton, England)
The 1990 installment of Britain’s best-known music festival, wrote James Delingpole of the London Telegraph, amounted to 'three days of mud, rain, putrid latrines and near-asphyxiation', thanks to soaked grounds and a then-record-setting crush of people in attendance to hear The Cure, Sinéad O’Connor, and acid-house guru Adamski. But the festival’s immediate aftermath was the real disaster. A group of travelers, roving citizens who had been a constant presence at the festival since its inception in the 1970s, had been given their own adjacent field that year to host free music by the likes of Ozric Tentacles and Hawkwind. After the official show came to a close, they hung around the site in order to forage through the grounds’ plentiful trash supply. Their dumpster-diving eventually led to a clash with security that would later be referred to as the “Battle of Yeoman’s Bridge.” It was a nasty, violent scrape that, according to one observer, 'looked a bit like the old Wild West meets Mad Max.' Glastonbury skipped its next year in order to reconfigure its security setup, and the travelers were gradually pushed out of the Glastonbury picture.
The Isle of Wight Festival 2012 (Newport, England)
The rainstorms that flooded the U.K. during the summer of 2012 didn’t stop more than 55,000 people from trying to attend this three-day festival that featured Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen – but it did impede their trips via car and boat across to and from the island. Concertgoers trying to get to the Isle of Wight via car were stuck in gridlock that lasted long enough to allow for in-vehicle napping – 350 cars became trapped in mud near the grounds’ approach, the Daily Mail reported, resulting in a five-mile jam that led to 10-hour delays. Ferry riders were trapped as well, thanks to problems with docking boats. Once people arrived at the site, they were forced to pitch their tents in a sizeable amount of mud. Yet things were fine musically – “amidst all the chaos, there was a great festival taking place,” wrote James Lachno in the London Telegraph – and there were even some relatively pastoral areas that allowed users to at least take some of their mind off the drenched patches of land.
TomorrowWorld 2015 (Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia)
While the lineup at the third installment of this 2015 American spinoff of the Belgian festival TomorrowLand boasted big-name EDM DJs like Kaskade and David Guetta – as well as an appearance by Shaquille O’Neal – heavy rain put a damper on the festival’s actual execution. The 8,000-acre Georgia farm place quickly turned into a mud pit; by day two, the organizers had decided to limit shuttle service back to nearby Atlanta. (People who weren’t camping needed to hike home or find available Ubers — whose surge pricing was reportedly as high as 5.9 times the normal fare —in order to dry off.) The festival’s third day was only open to people who were already on the grounds, although that didn’t stop people from trying to brave the weather and broach the gates. TomorrowWorld has not come back to the States since, although the Belgian edition is still scheduled for July.
Love Parade 2010 (Duisberg, Germany)
The Love Parade was one of the greatest street parties ever originally held in Berlin since 1989. It was even the biggest dance festival from over the world. It brought the city to a sweaty standstill every summer for 14 years, before moving on to other venues. In July 2010, the love came to an end with the death of 21 festival-goers in a crowd crush. Nobody knows exactly how many people crowded onto the streets of Duisburg for the 2010 parade - estimates range from 400,000 to 1.4 million - but whatever the reality, it was too many. For the first time, the event was held in a closed-off area, and the entrance to the site - a long tunnel - proved horribly inadequate. The 21 fatalities and over 500 injured were crushed in overcrowding on a ramp at one end of the tunnel.
The atmosphere was explosive. Many in the crowd seemed to be intoxicated. When people started falling off the stairs and pulling others with them, it became just chaotic. They just couldn't be stopped. It was a living hell (Eyewitness police officer).
I will never forget the sight. There were all these twisted-up bodies of those who had been crushed. They were lying at the tunnel exit. Their faces had all turned blue (Eyewitness woman trapped in tunnel).
These tragic deaths, and the 500 others injured, prompted the organisers to declare: 'Out of respect for the victims, the Love Parade will never take place again.'
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