When 23-year-old Izel went to Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival with her sister, they didn’t imagine they’d have to climb over injured and dead bodies to escape the festival with their lives.

Other festivalgoers they had befriended weren’t so lucky.

“People were screaming: ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe! Help! Stop the concert!’ And we just looked around and people were dropping like flies, like, their eyes rolling back and just falling in between everyone.”

Speaking to Hack on triple j, Izel described the horrific scenes of a fatal crowd surge during Travis Scott’s headlining set at Astroworld last Friday night, which ended with eight dead and hundreds left injured at the Houston event.

Earlier in the evening, Izel had met and befriended two of the victims: Franco and Jacob, young Uni grads who had travelled interstate to attend Astroworld.

“I found out that they were there because of Jacob’s birthday,” she explains. “They’re from Chicago and my sister [and I have] photos with him and then there’s a photo that he’s in the same pile, like his body’s just lying there dead.”

In the aftermath, she tweeted Franco’s brother, writing “He left this world protecting others. He was an angel in disguise. So so sorry for your loss, you and your family are in our prayers.”

Cesar Patino @kingcesar244 Can anyone get me the people that tried to save my brother in the Travis Scott concert #Astrofest #astroworldfestival #Houston #Travis Scott #Astrofest #astroworldfestival please anyone try to find them I want to see who spent my brother final moments with 3:49 PM · Nov 6, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

“It was absolutely tragic because he said he was going to help. He knew we were the first-timers and he’s like, ‘Guys, we need to protect them at all costs. If y’all see them in the mosh pit, pull them out’. I was like, aren’t you the sweetest?”

But “within seconds” of Travis Scott’s set starting, they were separated in the churning crowd. “I didn’t see my sister. Didn’t see him, anyone I knew.”

Over 50,000 people were in attendance at the sold-out event at Houston’s NRG Park on Friday night. Police and fire officials were called out to the festival, responding to a “mass casualty incident”. Promoters Live Nation had agreed to cut Scott’s show short after multiple people collapsed at 9:38pm, but the set continued for another 37 minutes.

What went wrong at Astroworld

Eight people have died at Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert in the U.S. But it’s not the first time safety at the rapper’s gigs has been questioned.

“It was a really cool, friendly vibe leading up to that,” says Izel.

After scoring tickets and planning their outfits, Izel and her sister arrived around 2pm to what sounded like the kind of fun you’d expect to have at most festivals.

“The vibe was pretty chill.” They’d seen Don Tolliver perform, enjoyed a laser light show, and around 6pm, made their way to the main stage to stake a good spot for Travis Scott.

“We know it gets filled up pretty fast… There was people sitting down [and] we were all waiting. We made friends [with] people around us. People from, like, Florida, others from Chicago. It was just like we were just getting to know everybody that was there.”

Lucas, a US Marine who decided to attend the festival last minute, agrees.

“I feel like there was really two events: the daytime and then the nighttime,” he tells Hack.

“The daytime – it was one of the best events of my life and a lot of people that were there will still say that.” But when the sun fell, “stuff started to go south.”

The atmosphere changed dramatically when a timer counting down to Scott’s performance sparked a rush. “Everybody literally ran up to the front,” says Izel, who was around five metres from the front of general admission.

“People were hitting us and we were cheek to cheek with people we did not know. Like, it was bad immediately.”

Lucas says people were “so squished together that it didn’t matter if you wanted to scratch your face… you just couldn’t do anything.” At that point, he was still having a good time; “We’re all jumping up and down and really just raging. We’re just hyped for Travis Scott.

“But at the same time, I think within two minutes, I immediately start thinking ‘Yo, this is not okay’. I started seeing people trip and if you trip, you’re not going back up. You’re just gonna unfortunately get stomped out.”

Izel was “100% stuck. I tried to turn around. I tried to make movement because my sister was with me, and I was holding her hand. And as soon as everybody started jumping, I looked at her, like dead in the eyes, and said ‘Get out, like, I can’t breathe’.”

“I said, turn around and she could not move. I couldn’t budge whatsoever. It got to the point that people started jumping. I’m only 5’2” and I couldn’t touch the floor; I was just being held up by other people’s bodies and that’s when I was like, yeah, this is not gonna end well.”

“I was like, if I can go into this hole [in the crowd] I can take a good gasp of air and I could probably run out. But no, it was bad, it was trying to move towards that and I felt somebody pulling [at] my sweats and it was a girl laying flat, who was getting stepped on.”

“I couldn’t identify her or anything because she was being moved around, being stepped on. And all I could do was just pop a hand down and tell the person in front of me to arch their back forward so she had room to, at least sit up…

“But the crowd moved other ways and my feet were barely touching the ground. I moved away and I just didn’t know what happened to her and then I ended up somehow in a circle where there was a lot of people on the ground.

“And that’s where I ended up staying because I was like, this is the only way I can get air. So, we started making a wall with these other people in the crowd, trying to make a circle around these bodies that were unconscious and dead.”

Lucas ended up trying to revive several people with CPR once he’d made his way out of the crush, “Because at that point I actually said ‘This ain’t the vibe at all’,” he recalls.

“The first person that I saw in distress was this girl and her boyfriend next to me, they just started screaming for her life. Saying ‘Please, I need to get out of here. I don’t want to die, please. I can’t breathe’.”

“So, I immediately grabbed her and I was like, ‘You need to calm down, just breathe’. Started blowing on her face and I tried to figure out a way to get us out of there… But at that point, people started pushing so much that everyone started tripping.”

“They were tripping on each other, and I just remember thinking, ‘Please don’t fall’, because I knew if I fall, I was so screwed. I was actually barefoot because they ripped my shoes right off.

Lucas and the couple worked their way “step-by-step” towards the back of the audience, working with the undulating waves of people. “We’re just screaming at everybody ‘Please get out of the way, this girls’ about to pass out!’”

Towards the back of the crowd, “probably 20 to 30 people out from being completely safe”, another girl started screaming and joined Lucas’ escape plan.

“She started just passing out, like her eyes just got all jittery. So, when I finally got to where I needed to get, I put her on the floor, slapping her face and yelling ‘Hey, are you okay? Can you hear me?’ She was just not responding to anything. So I checked her pulse and she was not responding.”

He resuscitated her with CPR and was looking for medical and security staff “And that’s when I saw another guy getting stomped out… he just seemed like a lifeless body. So, I rushed over there, pushed two, three people out of the way and dragged him out.”

“That’s when I realised, I had to leave because I started getting kicked and tossed around and I wasn’t trying to get stomped out either.”

Izel says she only made it out alive thanks to the efforts of three other attendees, whose identities she still doesn’t know.

“I was on the ground giving CPR and it finally came to me that he was dead. Someone said, ‘He’s dead, you need to get out of here’ and I was shaking. Like, I did not know what to do.”

“I went straight to panic mode and stayed shocked, and this guy just grabbed my hand and he pulled me all the way out. He had two other friends — they were these big guys and they started making a path all the way to the back.

“They just threw me over rails, and I just followed until we hit the grass in the back, and we were good back there. I could get air.”

She tweeted her gratitude to the men, hoping they made it out safe and sound.

Skip Twitter Tweet

FireFox NVDA users – To access the following content, press ‘M’ to enter the iFrame.

Izel @Izelisabella28 @astroworldfest #ASTROWORLDFest #ASTROFEST #AstroWorld #astroworld To the guy in the white hoodie & his friends who paved a way out when I alone,threw me over multiple rails & lead the way until I was breathing right again THANK YOU SO MUCH! You saved my life hope you see this 7:08 PM · Nov 6, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

“He said ‘What’s going on?’ several times because we made the whole crowd say: ‘Help! Stop the concert!”

“We said many things to catch his attention. We did catch his attention. We saw him like, turn our way multiple times and nothing.”

“We called 911 in the middle of the concert to stop the concert, like, and nothing. We did what we could… unless running on stage and actively telling him, can you stop the concert? Other than that, I don’t think there was any other way…”

“All he said was ‘What the f*ck is this?’ And he’s like, ‘Okay, let’s do what we came here to do’ and then continued the song and people would keep jumping and raging,” says Izel.

“That was the saddest moment because we thought we had like a glimpse, like a little second of hope in between songs for him to stop. And instead he continued.”

“As soon as you see paramedics in the crowd, as soon as you see like a body, a dead body, surfing the crowd trying to get out. I believe that’s when it raised awareness and to stop the whole thing. I’ve seen other artists stop concerts for less just because someone lost the shoe or someone was dehydrated. And when you see a body floating, I believe you should stop. It’s common sense.”

As someone stranded in the chaos, Izel believes Astroworld was oversold and with more security and infrastructure, could’ve avoided disaster.

“He sold out once and then reopened and sold more… Also, he’s the type of guy to encourage people to rage and come through.”

“At Astroworld, every year, the people that don’t get tickets are known to break down the fences and come in and just bombard the whole show. And so yeah, if he’s known for that, they should have upped their security knowing that he encourages people that don’t have tickets to jump that wall… There was too many people there.”

“What definitely ended up going wrong was just the lack of whoever was supposed to mitigate the risk, whoever should have planned for this maybe happening totally failed on that part.”

“The security were completely lacking in experience. They were asking us to help them with CPR. They didn’t even know what to do, which was absolutely ridiculous. Once things started going downhill, the people that should’ve been prepared, I don’t think were prepared.”

Travis Scott has been heavily marketed to young audiences through branding partnerships – Fortnite concerts, McDonald’s meals, and PlayStation sneakers – and among the Astroworld fatalities were a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old.

Lucas says he saw much younger in attendance. “You know, there were 10-year-olds, 8-year-olds – these kids do not belong at a concert where there’s mosh pits left and right. That was just an irresponsibility on whoever allowed that, or to the parents too,” he says. “I feel like they should stop letting kids into the concerts.”

After her ordeal, Izel understandably doesn’t want “anything to do with large crowds. I still like concerts and love concerts and I just think I’m gonna be the type to be on the outskirts now.”

“Crowds now scare me.”