Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner provided an update Wednesday on some of those still recovering from Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival tragedy, saying three people are still in critical condition. At a city council meeting, Turner read the names of the eight people who died before pausing the meeting for a moment of silence.
“How did this happen? That is a question that remains on all of our minds,” Turner said at the meeting. “Where were the missteps? Where were the failures? Where were the gaps? We owe it to the family members, all of those who attended and quite frankly the city as a whole.”
On Tuesday, Bernon Blount announced his 9-year-old grandson Ezra was in a medically induced coma at a Houston hospital. It’s unclear if Ezra, who went to the Astroworld music festival with his father, was one of the three in critical condition that Turner mentioned.
“I’m angry because it’s disrupted our family, and this could have been avoided if people in positions of power had done the right thing,” Bernon said.
Also on Tuesday, a Houston-area law firm that has filed a lawsuit against rapper Travis Scott held a news conference with some of the young people represented in the suit. They described the chaos they experienced.
“I look behind me and I see like it really looks like a whirlpool of just kids and people like falling and people are trying to reach up, like they’re reaching up for you,” concertgoer Eligio Garcia III said.
“Probably one of the scariest things that I’ve ever been through,” concertgoer Jonathan Espinoza added. “Gates had fallen, police were everywhere, and it was just chaos already in the making.”
On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the formation of a task force to develop concert safety recommendations he said would “ensure that the tragedy that occurred at the Astroworld Festival never happens again”.
“Live music is a source of joy, entertainment, and community for so many Texans — and the last thing concertgoers should have to worry about is their safety and security,” Gov. Abbott said in a news release announcing the task force. “From crowd control strategies to security measures to addressing controlled substances, this task force will develop meaningful solutions that will keep Texans safe while maximizing the joy of live music events.”
