Ultra returns to Miami in March. Let’s heed the lessons of the Travis Scott concert | Editorial
Miami’s Ultra Music Festival 2022 is around the corner. During three weekend days in late March, downtown will reverberate with hypnotic electronic dance music as an estimated 55,000 young people gather for the event. City leaders must take steps now to make sure it will be a safe experience for all.
As we learned from the tragedy of Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert in Houston, crowded music festivals can turn deadly. Huge crowds, limited space, popular performers, drugs and alcohol, the quest for a good spot near the stage — and all of it amped up by pandemic-fueled demand. This will be the first Ultra in two years.
No doubt, the vibe of Ultra and that of a Scott concert are different. Scott has a history of encouraging the energized crowds to get wild and to “make the ground shake,” as he did in Houston even as ambulances were rushing into the crowd to aid distressed fans. In the end, fans suffered suffocation, trampling and heart failure, with eight dead and 25 hospitalized.
Lessons of Houston
The horrific scene and chilling accounts from concert survivors should make Miami city officials and Ultra organizers take a long, hard look at their crowd control plans — and vow to residents that this cannot, will not happen in Miami.
Yes, Ultra is mellower but the Miami extravaganza hasn’t been without violence. In 2015, a security guard was trampled by a raging crowd wanting to crash the party without tickets. Ultra organizers, who are have been threatened with eviction by Miami residents, responded and hired Ray Martinez, a former Miami Police chief, as the festival’s chief of security.
The Editorial Board asked Martinez on Tuesday: Given the tragedy in Houston, will security measures will be reexamined for Ultra?
“This event will have a ripple effect to every major event across the country,” Martinez said. “We don’t know enough yet as to what led to the Houston tragedy, but we will pay attention to lessons to be learned and adopt them for Ultra if warranted.”
That must happen. Yes, it’s necessary. Like Astroworld, Ultra will return for its first show after two years of pandemic lockdown. People’s pent-up frustrations have been seen in unruly behavior on airlines. At Astroworld, fans noted that many concertgoers seemed more aggressive than usual.
The Houston Police Department is investigating what led to the carnage. More than a dozen lawsuits have already been filed against Scott, a hometown rapper who launched the annual festival along with Live Nation Entertainment Scott has said he was unaware until after the concert that so many fans were in distress.
City is prepared
We know that throughout the years, Ultra has addressed its weaknesses. So Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told the Board he is confident the city will be prepared.
“Miami police and fire have worked events of the same magnitude of Astroworld or larger for decades,” Suarez said in a statement. “The city of Miami will be working with the Houston authorities to review their after-action plan.”
And Commissioner Joe Carollo agreed the city is up for Ultra. “We will meet with police and fire to make sure we keep it safe during Ultra and also at the New Year’s Eve celebration in downtown Miami,” Carollo told the Board.
Florida International University professor Craig K. Skilling, who teaches a class called Mega Event Management, said Ultra organizers and Miami city officials should try to anticipate potential issues and be proactive in taking action so they don’t find themselves in a similar situation as Houston. “You must do your due diligence,” Skilling said.
One area to focus on, Skilling suggested, is to ensure crowd control, knowing that the audience, maybe when a popular artist begins a set, will be ready to “explode from excitement and anticipation.”
“Grown-ups don’t do this, but young people at concerts do,” he said.
And artists must play a role in making their concert safe for fans, Skilling added. “I get that performers want to feed off the energy from the crowd. But they, too, have a responsibility, like everyone else putting on the concert, to make the safety of the concertgoers a top priority.”
We’re counting on city officials and others to do just that.
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This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 7:57 PM.