Witnesses and expert criticise safety after crowd incidents at Smukfest

Witnesses have described dangerous crowd conditions during the Minds of 99 concert at Smukfest festival, where two people fainted, while a crowd safety expert says the festival should improve how it manages audiences, DR reports.

About 38,000 people watched the band at Bøgescenen, the festival’s main stage, on Saturday. The crowd was so tightly packed that some people could not see the entire concert, while others became trapped and fainted.

Festival guest Stefan Florescu said he had to pull a woman to safety behind a bar after she began panicking, crying and hyperventilating.

“People were pushing, and about a metre from me there was a group of young girls. One of them panicked and began to cry and hyperventilate,” he said.

Florescu said the woman was close to fainting, so he helped her over to the nearby bar.

“It was a dangerous situation. If she had fainted, we would probably have been standing on top of her,” he said.

Smukfest has said that 10 people were “pressed together at a bar” during the concert, forcing volunteer assistants to help them over the counter and into the area behind it. Two of them fainted.

Festival security chief Thomas Rydahl said the following day that Smukfest had done “everything” it could, but that such situations must not arise.

Repeated crowd problems

It is not the first time that Smukfest has experienced problems linked to large concert crowds. Several music reviewers considered the conditions during Prince’s 2013 concert too dangerous for the audience. Two years later, the festival had to stop a concert by Kim Larsen because of chaotic conditions that made several people feel unwell.

“It does not seem that they have sufficient control over crowd flows and how much people are allowed to push,” said Morten Thanning Vendelø, a lecturer at Copenhagen Business School who researches crowd safety at festivals.

“Otherwise, we would not see these repeated incidents,” he said.

Vendelø said the situation appeared to have reached a possible tipping point.

“It did not ultimately go wrong, but they were moving towards a situation where perhaps very little more would have been needed for it to go wrong,” he said.

Calls for faster assistance

Elsewhere at the festival during the same concert, 23 year old Thea Bech Pedersen saw a woman collapse in front of her. Several people quickly formed a circle around the woman to give her air, while others raised their phones and hands and called for first aid staff.

Bech Pedersen estimated that it took about 10 minutes for the first aid workers to reach them through the crowd. The woman regained consciousness and was helped out, but Bech Pedersen said assistance should be available more quickly.

She suggested establishing fenced first aid points near Bøgescenen, where people who are injured or have fainted could be taken to get air and receive help.

Expert points to Roskilde Festival

Vendelø said Smukfest could consider dividing the audience area around Bøgescenen into zones, as is done at Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival. He also suggested fencing in the audience areas around individual stages more extensively.

When assessing the safety risks of each concert, the festival could decide how many people to admit and announce that limit to the audience, he said.

Smukfest is analysing whether safety arrangements were adequate during the Minds of 99 concert. Rydahl said the festival needed more time before drawing conclusions about possible changes to safety measures at large concerts in the future.

He has continued to encourage guests to contact the festival if they experienced anything unpleasant. So far, very few people have done so, he said, adding that the festival was willing to listen and help.