AUSTIN (KXAN) — Five months after the Astroworld Festival tragedy, the ultimate report from Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas Task Force on Concert Safety was launched Tuesday — and a live performance safety consultant doesn’t consider it goes almost far sufficient.
The nine-page report (seven pages with out the quilt and desk of contents) lays out suggestions to maintain concertgoers secure and forestall one other crowd surge just like the one which killed 10 individuals and injured a whole lot eventually November’s competition in Houston.
The recommendations embody requiring centralized on-site command at occasions to rapidly determine whether or not to close down or pause live shows throughout emergencies.
Other suggestions direct occasion organizers to be clear on which businesses will reply to any 911 calls, to analysis the artists forward of time to know what sort of crowd to count on.
“It’s a very disappointing report, very superficial,” mentioned Paul Wertheimer, who runs Crowd Management Strategies, a live performance safety consulting agency primarily based in Los Angeles.
In 1979, Wertheimer was a part of the task force introduced collectively after a crowd surge killed 11 individuals at a The Who live performance in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He advised KXAN the findings within the Texas report, though good ones, are too normal and “nothing new,” relying closely on paperwork already accessible on-line and saying little in the way in which of enforcement.
“It’s not going to go anywhere. They needed to put teeth in that report,” Wertheimer mentioned. “You can’t talk just about training; you have to talk about what kind of training.”
“And I didn’t see any mention in the report about festival standing room environments, the kind of environment we saw at Astroworld,” he continued. “That’s the most dangerous and deadly crowd configuration for live entertainment events.”
The task force report does lay out particular suggestions relating to allowing for large occasions, suggesting a transfer to a common template for permits statewide. Right now, municipalities deal with their very own permits, whereas unincorporated components of counties defer to state statutes.
That’s an issue, in keeping with James Gresham, a board member of the Texas Municipal Police Association, which was a part of the governor’s task force.
“For some counties, [overseeing permits] is a very labor-intensive process,” Greshman advised KXAN. “Some counties, if they do it at all, it’s more of a rubber stamp.”
Gresham, who helps facilitate the Larry Joe Taylor Texas Musical Festival in Stephenville, mentioned the Texas Legislature might assist discover allowing options through the subsequent legislative session.
“Some states that have a really strong history of festivals, New York, California, for instance, their planning requirements are much more extensive than what we have here in Texas,” he mentioned.
Abbott’s workplace mentioned nobody was accessible Tuesday for an interview. Questions submitted by e-mail weren’t answered by deadline.
The governor did subject a quick assertion alongside the republishing of the report, thanking the task force for its work, including, “The recommendations, findings, and solutions detailed in this report will help the State of Texas prevent another tragedy like that at Astroworld Festival from happening again.”