How Does Crowd Control Work?

A well-prepared safety team should be able to prevent Injuries and deaths due to crowding at entertainment venues. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/astroworld-crowd-control-news.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff Lauren vog obam here. On November five, fans
of rapper Travis Scott poured into Houston's Energy Park for
the third annual Astro World Festival. As Scott took to
the stage, a massive crowd surged forward, crushing nine concert

(00:23):
goers to death and seriously injuring many others. The Astro
World Festival is far from the first crowded concert to
turn fatal. Similar tragedies occurred just for example, in nineteen
seventy nine at a concert by The Who, and in
at an a C d C show. These crowd disasters
sadly are more frequent and deadlier at major pilgrimages and

(00:48):
sporting events, but experts say they don't have to be.
For the article, this episode is based on how Stuff Works,
spoke with Stephen Allen, a professional safety and security consultant
and the founder of the UK crowd management agency Crowd Safety.
He likens crowd management at a concert to piloting a

(01:08):
passenger jet. The passengers on any commercial airline trust that
the company has safety regulations in place, autopilot capability, back
up engines, flotation devices, and emergency landing gear and but
in accordance with Murphy's law, anything that can go wrong
eventually will in a mass failure situation. Alan said, that's

(01:29):
when you have a team on that flight deck, and
for me, that's your show stop team. As the name suggests,
the show stop team's job is to stop the show.
When they give the signal, the house lights come up,
filling the space with pure white light. The artists should
then instruct the crowd that there has been an incident,
not to panic, and to proceed to the exits. It's

(01:52):
a strategy designed to let the often inebrated crowd know
unambiguously that the party is over. The tricky part is
knowing when or whether to send the show stops signal.
One of the most important components of the job, according
to Alan, is being able to spot a potentially dangerous
situation when it arises, and part of that involves familiarity

(02:15):
with different types of concert etiquette. Un knowing, for example,
that you're more likely to encounter a mosh pit at
a punk show than a Dolly Parton concert. Then there's
recognizing that even in rowdy crowds, most mash pits are
relatively safe Alan explained that they've got their own rules
and they know what they're doing, but what you're looking
for is that sign of distress in their faces. When

(02:39):
a crowd starts to move in a frenzy, things can
quickly take a turn for the dangerous. The force of
a rushing crowd can exceed a thousand pounds that's four
and fifty kilos, which is great enough to bend steel.
Folks trapped in the middle of the crush can have
the air forced from their lungs, or if they're knocked
to the ground, can be trampled under foot by the crowd.

(03:00):
In the early nineteen nineties, crowd safety researcher John J.
Frewin developed an easy acronym for the four elements to
monitor in a potential crowd disaster situation. It's called FIST
that stands for force, information upon which the crowd acts,
space involved, and time or the duration of the incident.

(03:22):
Frewin wrote that if one of these elements seems off,
say a person falls and doesn't get back up, the
show should stop. As a result, the security team must
be constantly scanning for people making involuntary movements or adopting
uncomfortable body language. People climbing or trying to over the
front stage barrier NonStop is another sure sign to stop

(03:44):
the show. The biggest danger, according to Alan, is crowd collapse,
when a group of people falls down and the people
behind them continue to surge forward. He said, Thankfully, it's
a rare occurrence. The problem is when it does happen,
it can be had a traffic Unfortunately, all of these
occurred at astor World. So what went wrong? As the

(04:08):
show went on? The dense, excited crowd grew increasingly panicked.
Video footage shows one concert goer climbing up the stage
scaffolding and attempting to notify a camera operator that people
are dying. However, Scott performed his entire set. The production
team never stopped the show. From the time security declared

(04:30):
a mass casualty event until the concert actually ended. A
full thirty seven minutes elapsed after World's fifty six page
safety plan did not address a deadly crowd surge situation.
An investigation by Houston Public Media subsequently revealed the document
outlined safety procedures for several different scenarios, from lost persons

(04:52):
to bad weather to a mass shooting event, but the
potential for crowd crush stood out as a noticeable omission.
Crowds Afty expert Paul Wertheimer, who reviewed the document after
the fact, told Houston Public Media that's all you need
to know about the plan. It didn't even address the
crowd live nation. The concerts promoter indicated in a recent

(05:13):
statement that it had released all surveillance footage to the
Houston Police and Fire departments, who are currently investigating the incident.
The company faces multiple lawsuits in the wake of the disaster,
and Scott himself is being sued as well. Scott also
canceled his headlining appearance at the Las Vegas Festival grounds
on November In the end, according to Alan, the real

(05:34):
tragedy is that this catastrophe could have been avoided with
proper preparation. He said, I love live music. I love
live events. That's why I got involved. Concerts can be
managed safely, they can be run safely. It's about everyone
accepting and understanding you know that this can actually happen.

(05:57):
Today's episode is based on the article why Astro World
was a recipe for deadly crowd crush on houstuffworks dot com,
written by Joanna Thompson. Green Stuff is production of I
heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot com,
and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.