A brand new process power will look into find out how to enhance the security at massive Houston-area occasions within the hopes of avoiding one other tragedy like final 12 months’s lethal Astroworld music pageant, officers stated Feb. 9.
The duty power will evaluation doable security upgrades, have a look at methods of bettering communication between totally different businesses and departments and make suggestions “to make sure constant operational requirements for future occasions,” Mayor Sylvester Turner stated.
Questions have been raised a few doable lack of coordination between officers who work for the town of Houston and surrounding Harris County, and pageant promoter Reside Nation over a number of points earlier than the Nov. 5 live performance. Among the many questions have been whether or not there was enough safety and medical personnel and whether or not there was enough coordinated planning for responding to emergency conditions like the large crowd surge that led to 10 deaths.
“We all know that the town and county can do higher,” Turner stated.
The ten individuals who died have been amongst 50,000 who attended the pageant headlined by rapper Travis Scott.
These killed died from compression asphyxia. A medical professional stated the strain from the group surge was so nice that it shortly squeezed all of the air from the victims’ lungs, inflicting them to go out inside a minute or so and die as a result of vital organs have been depleted of oxygen.
Those that died ranged in age from 9 to 27 years outdated. Roughly 300 individuals have been injured and handled on the scene, and 25 have been taken to hospitals.
Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia stated he hopes the duty power will assist resolve any fears individuals may need in regards to the security of Houston-area occasions.
“I would like this process power to resolve considerations of oldsters all through our area, that in the event that they’re coming to an occasion, whether or not contained in the county or inside the town, that they know that there was quite a lot of thought put into the security and well-being of all attendees at these respective occasions,” Garcia stated.
The duty power is about to fulfill month-to-month, however no date was given for when its members hoped to complete their work.
When requested by reporters how a lot of the duty power’s work would concentrate on determining what went mistaken on the Astroworld pageant and what coordination among the many varied events wasn’t executed, Turner stated the group would look to the longer term and never again at anybody occasion. He stated the duty power wouldn’t intervene with the prison investigation of the Astroworld live performance that’s being led by Houston police.
Greater than 400 lawsuits have been filed over accidents and deaths on the live performance, together with many towards Reside Nation and Scott.
Final month, the Texas Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which is overseen by the Texas Supreme Court docket, agreed to consolidate the lawsuits and allow them to be dealt with by one decide because the circumstances proceed by the court docket system. The panel hasn’t but chosen a decide.
The U.S. Home Oversight and Reform Committee in December introduced it was investigating Reside Nation’s position within the lethal live performance.
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