The Deadly Astroworld Tragedy Sparked An Urgent Safety Debate. Then, One Family Took Action.

Yahoo

19 hours ago

It's hard to forget the calamitous events of the 2021 Astroworld Festival, as what began as a carefree Travis Scott-run concert event quickly spiraled into a harrowing nightmare.
On Nov. 5, 2021, at NRG Park in Houston, a deadly catastrophe had unfolded after a massive crowd surge during Scott's headlining performance. In the end, 10 people died, aged between 9 and 27, and hundreds more suffered physical injuries as well as emotional turmoil.
In clips that circulated online, attendees screamed for help — cries that they say went unheard— as no one behind the festival stepped in to end the event immediately. There were reports of people crushed in different parts of the overwhelming crowd, experiencing breathing difficulties, and, for some, cardiac arrest.
Netflix revisits that haunting reality in its new documentary, 'Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy,' a recollection of the disastrous event as told through interviews with festival attendees, survivors and families of victims whose lives haven't been the same since that fateful night.
The film recounts the events that led to Astroworld's safety failures in an attempt to detail where exactly the festival went wrong and who might be to blame, with help from experts and personnel who were involved behind-the-scenes — including the former commander of the Houston Police, Mark Lentini, who maintains that the chaos of the event was 'so totally predictable.'
The documentary backs up that claim with references to past crowd management incidents involving Scott, including Lollapalooza 2015, where the rapper was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for encouraging fans to ignore security barricades and rush the stage.
Scott faced no criminal charges for the aftermath of the Astroworld tragedy, nor did event promoter Live Nation or others in connection with the deadly crush after a Texas grand jury declined to indict.
The rap star has acknowledged the mass casualty event a handful of times since then, including in an Instagram video posted immediately following the festival, a too-soon-announced BetterHelp partnership offering free therapy to those impacted (which faced major backlash), and interviews with Charlamagne Tha God (one month after the tragedy) and GQ. Live Nation issued its own brief statement online shortly after the Astroworld incident and addressed allegations of overselling the event in Netflix's documentary.
Still, none of those acknowledgments made up for the alleged organizational failures and poor crowd planning that allowed such a tragedy to happen.
'I believe Astroworld 2021 was not an accident,' says crowd safety expert Scott Davidson at one point in the Netflix doc. 'It was an inevitability due to the lack of foresight and the abandonment of basic safety protocols.'
He adds, 'This was not a case of missing red flags. This was a case of ignoring blaring warning sirens.'
That's been an especially tough pill to swallow for those still grappling with the aftermath of Astroworld, like Maria Peña, who lost her 23-year-old son, Rudy Peña, to the calamity.
'I wish there were changes because of what happened with Rudy and the other people,' she says in the doc. 'I wish that now those artists who perform, those owners of those companies, were better. So that what happened to Rudy doesn't happen to anyone else.'
One family that viewers don't hear from in the 'Astroworld Tragedy' documentary is the parents of Madison Dubiski, one of the 10 victims who died from the crushing environment of the event.
According to Brian Dubiski, Madison's father, Netflix did not directly contact their family, nor do they have a part in the new documentary. Still, what they say they endured the night of Astroworld — and every day that's followed — mirrors the sentiments shared by other victims' loved ones featured in the film.
'It was pretty horrific,' Michelle Dubiski, Madison's mother, laments, thinking back on the day that all hell broke loose. The hours before her daughter and son, Ty, who she says were 'inseparable best friends,' traveled to the Astroworld Festival together were much different.
'They were excited all day from the beginning of the morning,' Brian says. 'FaceTiming both of us. Madison getting ready to go, sending us pictures of what she was wearing. They were fans of Travis's and had seen him before, so they were excited and ready to go. And unfortunately, it turned into a horrible tragedy.'
As Michelle remembers it, Madison, her brother, and their three childhood best friends arrived at the festival around 5:30 p.m., oblivious to the chaos that had occurred earlier that day when some attendees breached the entry gates and rushed past security to storm the festival grounds.
'All of us were unaware of that, or the kids would not have remotely been going,' she asserts.
Even while at the event, Michelle says she and Brian were still speaking with their kids, getting more pictures that Madison had sent. 'But then, at a certain point,' when cell service dropped out, 'we lost any sort of communication.'
That's when things took a turn for the worse.
It started when Michelle received a phone call from one of Madison's best friends, who was not at Astroworld that night, but also got a call from friends telling her to get to Madison because she had been hurt.
'I couldn't even put two words together,' Michelle recalls, noting that she initially couldn't get in touch with her son either, because of poor cell reception in the area. 'So we immediately jump up and start calling hospitals.'
It turns out that, in the interim, Ty and Madison got separated amid the chaos, while he and his friends were shifted to another area of the festival where others had been displaced.
'So he had no idea until Brian and I were able to get a hold of him, saying, 'You've got to get to the med tents and find Madison.''
Forty-five minutes of scrambling passed before Michelle received another phone call, this time from a local hospital, stating that Madison was there. But from there, she says, 'It was just devastating.'
'We were frantic,' Brian adds. 'It's just that feeling, that gut feeling, that something bad has happened. And Ty being frantic, and us trying to communicate with him as he's running from tent to tent — I think he had lost both of his shoes from the crowd surge — the whole thing was chaotic.'
The parents didn't know what to make of the mayhem, as they had never experienced such pandemonium from a music festival of all events, although Brian acknowledges that there have been other disasters in the past — like the 1990 Glastonbury Festival and Woodstock '99, which was also a documentary subject in Netflix's 'Trainwreck' series. Still, nothing could've prepared the two for the unexpected news of their daughter's death.
'There's nothing more imaginable than walking into a hospital and having a doctor basically just look at you and not have to say anything and just shake his head,' Brian says. 'It's haunting.'
'As parents,' Michelle adds, 'you spend your whole life protecting your children to keep them out of harm's way. Never in our wildest imagination would we dream that our two adult children would go to a concert and one would not come home.'
An autopsy from a medical examiner confirmed that Madison, along with the other nine Astroworld victims, died of accidental 'compression asphyxia.' However, Brian says, 'Without oversharing, it was much more gruesome than that.'
By some festivalgoers' accounts, as outlined in the 'Astroworld Tragedy' documentary, people in the crowd that night were being trampled on, some stacked on top of one another, struggling to breathe. Others were squeezed together so tightly they couldn't even move their bodies.
According to victims' attorneys, more than 4,900 people (much more than initial reports of hundreds) were physically hurt in some capacity, with over 700 claims filed by people who needed 'extensive medical treatment,' Billboard reported.
Looking back on the fatal event, Madison's father is adamant that what took place 'didn't have to happen.' 'We believe, again, very strongly that it could have been preventable,' says Brian. 'And so did the public report that the police department released.'
After the festival, the Houston Chronicle reported that past court records show that Live Nation has been linked to hundreds of injuries and deaths at its events since 2006.
'I think people assume, as did we, that every protocol would be in place and everything would be zipped up when anybody attends a large event,' Michelle says. 'And to find out that it wasn't, and our daughter was a victim of that, as Brian said, it's a hard pill to swallow.'
That's what inspired the two parents to start their Pink Bows Foundation, an organization established in Madison's honor on May 1, 2022, (the same day as her birthday) to promote live event safety and advocate for policies that will improve standards going forward. So that 'another family never has to endure this type of horrific tragedy ever again.'
The pink bows in the foundation's name stem from a poster-sized picture of Madison that Michelle and Brian's nieces and nephews created for a makeshift memorial to their daughter at NRG Park. Someone then put out a pink bow and hashtagged it 'Pink Bows for Madison,' and it took off from there on social media.
'I tell people often that I truly know that those Pink Bows kept Brian and I alive in a time that was just beyond shattering,' says Michelle. 'And so when we started the foundation as our way to say thank you, because at that time we weren't able to speak to the media. We couldn't really go on social media at all and say thank you to the world.'
'And so our way of thanking the world for their incredible acts of kindness,' she adds, 'was to name the foundation the Pink Bows Foundation.'
To this day, Madison's parents remember her as the 'nicest, sweetest, [most] compassionate, loving, caring individual' one could know. The Cyprus, Texas, native, who died at age 23, grew up as a competitive dancer and cheerleader 'from the time she could walk,' Michelle notes. Madison was also a 'super philanthropic' member of the National Charity League.
'By the time she graduated from high school, she had 500 philanthropic hours at 25 different charities,' her mom says.
That's where the charitable component of the Pink Bows Foundation comes in, supporting causes close to Madison's heart. Even before the foundation was established, Madison's parents say they began an endowment fund to award scholarships through Madison's alma mater, Cy-Fair High School, and its special needs Best Buddies program.
However, the aspect that parents are most proud of is the advocacy work that's helping them make strides in addressing the deeply rooted issues with large-scale event organization and management, as stated on their foundation's website.
The Pink Bows Foundation's biggest initiative, so far, has been launching The Showstop® Procedure, a training and certification program created by global experts in crowd safety and management that's helping to set new standards in the event space and, further, preventing injuries and fatalities like those from Astroworld.
'We have the first one in the world that's been created essentially, where it comes with an accredited certification,' says Brian. 'The curriculum was worked out through and approved by the International Risk and Safety Management Group. We went out and vetted what we considered to be the top two crowd safety experts in the world, and that was Steve Allen and Dr. Mark Hamilton, both extremely respected in this industry.'
The program first launched in Houston, where Brian and Michelle hoped to start small before rolling out to other regions to begin 'getting the wheels going and start making an impact.' 'And I think we've done that,' he says.
They claim to have already trained and certified over 200 individuals who have completed the process within the last 90 to 120 days, and aim to continue helping venues, promoters and the live entertainment industry worldwide.
Through this work, the foundation has garnered support from public figures like Sir Paul McCartney, musician Jim Kerr, and renowned promoter Barrie Marshall, as well as global event safety alliances. When it launched three years ago, Brian says he and Michelle didn't have 'any idea we would be able to grow like this and be surrounded by such great human beings and support and people that have helped the foundation make such strides.' However, through their own education, help from others and the progress they have made so far, they feel assured that they're doing all the right things to honor Madison's memory.
'I don't think there's anyone out there who can dispute that what we're doing is for the better good,' says Brian. 'We want to continue doing that in every way we can. And we're proud of the work that our entire team, our foundation, our board, and all of our representatives and volunteers have done.'
'We owe that to our daughter so that she didn't die in vain,' he adds. 'We know she would be fighting for both of us if the tables were turned, and we want to create a legacy in a positive manner.'
In between losing Madison and establishing the Pink Bows Foundation, Brian and Michelle filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Scott, Live Nation, and other event promoters and organizers. The families of the other nine victims also sued over their loved ones' deaths. By May 2024, all 10 cases were settled for undisclosed amounts, but that didn't bring the Dubiski family closure.
'There's not any type of settlement that can bring our daughter back,' says Brian. 'I think the closure for us was getting past that so that we can breathe and try to start healing.'
For Michelle, she says, 'There's a lot of attention on the 10 deaths, and there's a lot of people there [at Astroworld] that were traumatized that are experiencing heavy PTSD and, on top of that, other massive injuries that oftentimes are not really discussed. But they have to live with those every day.'
'This is part of why we fight as well,' she adds. 'It's not just for the 10 deaths and the victims and our daughter, but it's also for people like our son that went through massive trauma himself and again, has to get up and figure out how to put one foot in front of the other as far as anxiety and the panic and just daily living. I feel for everybody that was there … so we fight for all of them.'
The obvious next step the Dubiskis look forward to is seeing 'everything more under a microscope' to prevent more event pitfalls and festival tragedies going forward. One thing they're currently focusing on implementing at live outdoor gatherings is the Pink Bows Safe Spaces, a custom pink tent that includes furniture, AC cooling units, and noise-cancelling headphones, as well as access to licensed mental health therapists and a team of volunteers.
'So, whether you're hot and you need to get out of the sun and have a drink of water, or dealing with something deeper like panic attacks or anxiety, 'It's a place to provide some solace,' that Brian says no one else in the U.S. is doing.
'I've never heard more genuinely passionate thank yous from people attending an event that say, 'Wow, thanks. This is cool.' Or, 'Thanks for having this here. Why is this not everywhere?'' Brian says of efforts so far, which have been held at festivals in cities like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.
'That feedback is really amazing and a light spot for us,' he adds, 'where we've just been in such a dark, traumatic experience. It's really nice to hear people genuinely thank our team for providing that.'
The parents hope to continue hosting the designated spaces at more concert events and, one day, even facilities for sports games. More than that, though, they want to make sure, through the Pink Bows Foundation and the Astroworld memorial that still stands at NRG Park, people never forget what happened to their daughter and the other Astroworld victims.
'Sometimes when tragedies happen, people go on their way because it didn't affect them,' Michelle concludes. 'Having the memorial there is a constant reminder that lives were lost here. This is why we're doing what we're doing. I think it makes a huge difference.'
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