The Year In Safety & Security: From COVID To Crowding, A Year Of Challenges

Deadly crowd crushes, unfortunately, are not new. But more than a year of the near-total shutdown of concerts is, and whether pent-up exuberance to see favorite artists played a role in the situation at Astroworld is a matter for investigators to address. 

And while tightly packed, largely unmasked events have taken place since Lollapalooza staged successfully in Chicago July 29-Aug. 1 with more than 100,000 fans per day in attendance, COVID is far from an unfortunate historical footnote. As Pollstar goes to press, the Delta variant continues to surge and a new Omicron variety is quickly spreading.  

With shows moving back indoors for the winter, states continue to apply sometimes wildly different rules and restrictions on mass gatherings, with New York City recently announcing that as of Dec. 14, its “Key To NYC” program will require New Yorkers aged 12 and older to show proof of two vaccine doses, unless they’ve had the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, in order to enter entertainment venues. Children aged 5-11 will need to have proof of at least one shot. 

Yet many cities and states across the country have no restrictions at all. 

But by and large, the industry seems to have navigated the COVID landscape well. With nearly 400,000 spinning Grant Park turnstiles, 203 Lollapalooza-related COVID infections were reported after the festival. In September, 10 cases were reported by Sonoma County health officials in the wake of BottleRock Napa Valley in California, which required vaccination or negative test proof to enter the Labor Day Weekend fest.

Venue officials may breathe easier about checking vaccination cards and making sure audiences are as infection-free as possible when opening their gates. But what people, especially young people who have been cooped up for more than a year of pandemic, do once they enter those gates remains a wild card that not only vexes security experts but, as we saw in November, can have tragic results.

“Because we have seen too many heartbreaking incidents like this before, it is tempting to rush to judgment about the causes of this one,” Event Safety Alliance President Steve Adelman says. 

Addressing factors like security staffing, crowd management training, response time, barricades, and incitement, Adelman points to American National Standards Institute document ES1.9-2020, the most recent publication of crowd management standards, drafted and edited, and continually reviewed and updated by ESA, IAVM and other professionals. 

A number of questions being asked of the Astroworld atmosphere leading to the report crowd surge need to be asked and answered, and all of which are addressed by ESI1.9 2020, he says.

“We really need to take an all-hazard approach to crowd behavior and crowd dynamics,” says Mark Herrera, director of education for the International Association of Venue Managers. 

Herrera was named to Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas Task Force on Concert Safety in response to the Astroworld festival deaths. “It’s about really knowing and understanding the kind of energy crowds are going to bring and really start training teams on how to identify behavioral patterns, patterns that aren’t conducive to an environment,” Herrera said earlier this year.

Almost forgotten in the year of COVID and the catastrophic crowd surge in Houston is the potential for terrorism – domestic or otherwise – at mass gatherings including live entertainment events. 

Security of lines into and out of events, along with post-event clustering, are serious issues all venues must come to grips with, according to security consultant Dan Donavan, founder and managing partner of security firm Stratoscope. 

And, coming full circle, COVID measures may have an unintended ripple effect – health and safety measures like social distancing and timed entry affect length and duration of lines, creating another potential security hazard and further need to secure lines. 

As the industry moves into 2022, safety and security stakes are higher than ever. With more and deadlier threats to public gatherings, it’s incumbent upon the business to rise to the challenges.