Receiving Improper Medical Care at the Astroworld Festival

The first job of the Astroworld Festival crowd management team, was to have a preplan in place that would know how to manage the crowd in the event that people were accidently injured at the live concert. This means that the owners, operators and crowd managers needed to have in place a health and safety protocol, for managing people who get injured at their event. Although it is unclear if this requirement was met, it is clear that many people were injured quite severely at the Astroworld Festival.

It goes without saying that the crowd management team, owners of the venue and workers at the event were responsible for maintaining the safety and crowd control of all concert attendees at the Astroworld Festival. The employers of the event were responsible as well to provide the emergency care workers with the proper instructions for the management of helping people who were injured at the event.

Improper First Aid Can Be Deadly

The crowd management at the Astroworld Festival were responsible to keep the crowd safe at all times, before, during and after the concert. Anyone who is tasked with being a first responder to a live concert event, needs to understand the updated and current protocols for managing care to people who are injured. If there are injuries to anyone in the crowd, there needs to be a field assessment to the person’s injuries, and a protocol in place to manage the injuries right away.

The Nature of Injuries at the Astroworld Festival

People who were injured at the Astroworld Festival were injured in a number of different ways. These personal injuries suffered at the live concert event included:

• Exhaustion
• Exposure to the elements
• Being stuck with needles
• Falling down
• Slipping on debris and breaking bones
• Breaking a hip
• Breaking ribs
• Crushing injuries
• Bleeding
• Bruising
• Compartment syndrome
• Tissue damage
• Lacerations and bruises
• Nerve injury
• Infection from bacteria in the wound
• Not being able to breathe

Crushing Injuries Are Lethal, and Often End in Death to the Victim

Crushing injuries are deadly, and need to be handled properly from the first moment in time. In the middle of a crush injury, the victim’s body has a severe and deadly reaction. On the impact of being crushed, the victim of a crush injury will sustain damage to muscle groups where swelling and bleeding will begin. There will be swelling as the compressive forces literally force blood to odd areas of the body, where the body cannot sustain that pressure for long. The compression to the body during the crushing event will lead to the vascular compromise of the victim. At that point, the victim’s blood vessels, nerves and muscle cells can collapse, leaving the body without a steady and necessary supply of oxygen and the nutrients to live.

Muscles are needed to be intact, to help move blood to the different parts of your body with your blood vessels. When most people here of a muscle, they think only of lifting weights. But muscles hold vital blood vessels that move blood all over your body. Everything in your body is completely connected!

If a muscle is crushed, it can be catastrophic for the crushing injury victim. This is because the muscle cells will die in just a few hours, and there may be no way for the body to then get the blood necessary to sustain the person’s life (including the heart, lungs, brain and other vital organs). If blood does not reach the person’s brain properly as a result of a crushing injury, the person will die from lack of blood to the brain.

A Crushing Injury Can Be Fatal for the Victim, If It Is Not Managed Properly on Scene

Crowd managers need to understand the pre-planning that is needed to anticipate if there will be major crushing injuries at a live concert event. Once a crowd gets out of hand, it is impossible to get it back under control in most instances, without stopping the show. A person can be in a crushing injury, and will not stabilize until that individual reaches the hospital, in most cases. Therefore, a victim crushed at the Astroworld Festival will not have a chance to properly recover, if the first aid given at the scene in the field is performed properly.

Crushing injuries are deadly in most cases. A crushing injury is lethal, because it will release deadly toxins to the person’s body. The muscles of the body can only withstand up to 4 hours without a proper blood flow before major cell death will occur in that person’s body. The toxins released from crushed tissue can lead into the body for up to 60 hours after a crushing injury. This means that even if the person is released to a hospital quickly, that individual may still have an issue with the crush injury, and can die several days later as a result of this type of crushing experience.

Crushing Injuries Can Happen at Live Events, and Event Managers Need Special Medical Training

People who are in charge of managing live concert events such as at the Astroworld Festival need to be specially trained to manage crush injuries and crush syndrome on concert attendees. For example, a tourniquet is NEVER used for the first aid management of a victim with a crush injury. People with crush injuries often go into cardiac arrest, and need to be cared for properly to preserve their lives. It is the responsibility of the people who own, run, and produce the show at the Astroworld Festival to know how to train emergency staff, employees and venue personnel responsible for crowd management, on the proper protocols to save the life of a victim of a crush injury.

Crush Injuries at Live Event Concerts Are Not Unusual in the Least!

Right off the bat, crowd management is not the same as crowd control. A crowd management plan needs to be in place for live concert events, to effectively deal with the safe movement of a crowd. This includes any crowd behavior, demographics, and even what the performer is saying to the crowd, if it is getting “riotous” or “making a ruckus” based on the energy of the crowd.

In the case of a large crowd of many tens of thousands of people, there always needs to be emergency exits near the front of a stage. These areas are major egress positions, that are kept clear during the entirety of the concert. This will allow any rushing of the stage to push people forward, that will allow people to then spread out to the right and left sides of the stage during crushing and rushing in that area. The sides of a stage cannot be blocked, specifically to handle a crowd rushing the stage. People will always be injured in a crush injury, and people at a live concert event will always have the opportunity to rush forward up to the stage.

Emergency Services at the Astroworld Festival and Emergency Protocols

The emergency responders associated with the managers, producers, owners of the property and crowd and security management at the Astroworld Festival are responsible for the giving of first aid on the scene. Before the EMTs arrive, you would have needed first aid, which is reasonable to expect that the handlers and crowd controllers of the event would have provided. It is critical that you receive the proper first aid for a crushing injury, as the cells begin to leak contents to surrounding tissues, killing your cells. These cells start to shut down and can leak toxins that are deadly to surrounding organs as well.

The managers, crowd controllers and owners of the Astroworld Festival facility needed to have specific training in first aid, to help people who were injured. They needed to have on hand all emergency first aid equipment, including:

• Eye protection
• First aid kits
• Defibrillators
• Emergency care kits
• Emergency splints and braces
• Emergency first aid kits
• First aid attendants
• Personal protective equipment
• Surgical gloves and masks
• Respirators

The people running the show and responsible for crowd management at the Astroworld Festival were tasked with checking for adequate safety procedures to be in place, to manage any emergency injuries at the event. If these tasks were not in place, then it would be difficult to properly manage anyone who was injured at the event. First aid that is poorly performed can actually do more harm than good.

Call for a Free Consultation

When you give us a call, we can answer any questions that you may have regarding your claim for having received improper medical care at the Astroworld Festival. If you were further injured from receiving improper care, then you need to give us a call for a free consultation. We are here to discuss and review your case and losses, especially related to your medical care, improperly received medical care, and any resulting injuries from the crowd, the venue or from the care of the medical personnel who assisted you.

We are able to go over your next steps to initiating litigation for your losses from care you received at the Astroworld Festival. We are able to speak with you, and are completely understanding that this may be a confusing and difficult time of healing for you, as you recover from your injuries related to the tragedy at the Astroworld Festival. Just give us a call today, we are here for you. We can answer any questions that you may have regarding any personal injuries that you sustained at the Astroworld Festival.