MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Chaotic concert in Argentina leaves two dead, a dozen injured and some teen agers still missing
Solari halted his performance several times, calling from the stage for security to help people who were stuck in the stampede and appeared to be fainting. 
Some 350,000 fans showed up for the concert, Mayor Ezequiel Galli told media. He said the event had been organized to handle less than half that number Two people were killed and over a dozen were injured when spectators rushed the stage at a chaotic outdoor rock concert in Argentina. The deadly crush of fans was blamed on lack of crowd control at Saturday's event featuring popular performer Indio Solari in the town of Olavarria.
Solari halted his performance several times, calling from the stage for security to help people who were stuck in the stampede and appeared to be fainting.
Some 350,000 fans showed up for the concert, Mayor Ezequiel Galli told a news conference. He said the event had been organized to handle less than half that number, and that it would be up to the justice system to decide who is to blame for the disaster.
“What happened was total chaos,” he said. “It just got away from us, out of control”.
“No one imagined that this many people would show up,” the mayor added, saying that by mid-afternoon some 100,000 vehicles, or one for every city resident, had arrived for the show.
President Mauricio Macri said that this type of accidents happen because some officials and people do not respect rules.
Witnesses said the lack of control was such that organizers neglected to collect tickets at the large field where the concert was held, letting anyone through the gates. The open space concert could only hold half the spectators that turned up. An idea of the lack of organization was one chemical toilet for every 500 people.
Likewise the concert was taken to Olavarría, 350 kilometers from Buenos Aires City, because of lax regulations and poor security and fiscal controls. It is estimated that the organizers, rock singer Indio Solari's company, collected somewhere between 10 and 12 million dollars.
Such was the chaos that many contracted buses never made it to the concert, and some left leaving people stranded. A special phone line was created to try and locate those still missing or which still have not returned to their homes. In Uruguay from an estimated 100 buses that drove to Olavarría, by Monday morning most had returned but six were still missing.
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Read all commentsNo one has said they only happen in Argentina, Trollboy; you are letting your paranoia run away with you again. Do you want me to name some from Europe? We are still holding inquiries into the Hillsborough disaster 28 years' later.
Mar 14th, 2017 - 12:57 pm +1And it's not irrelevant what happened outside the grounds, especially to the people who were left behind by their coaches. It contributed to the problems inside the grounds, and should have been part of the organisation.
As for locking people up without trial, why? It doesn't punish the guilty any more severely, it just means you don't know whether you are punishing the right person.
Yes, because concert incidents and crowd control breaches ONLY happen or have happened in Argentina...
Mar 14th, 2017 - 12:29 pm 0Sensationalist article. What happens outside the concert is irrelevant, i.e. how many buses or what happened outside the concert grounds. It's called freedom, if people are stupid enough to rent buses without tickets for an event, then they deserve the inconvenience.
The investigation should be about the concert grounds. Now if it is discovered far more tickets were sold than should have been available, then yes, investigate everyone involved and lock them up, no trial.
After autopsies were performed, it turns out the two victims died from cardiac arrest but did not present symptoms of having been crushed. There were a number of injured of which two in ICU. While the Indio Solari event lacked in many security measures, the incidents were minor if the number of attendants (between 350,000 and 400,000) are taken into account. Olavarria city itself has 100,000 residents.
Mar 19th, 2017 - 10:03 pm 0However, the state news agency Telam published in the same night that seven people had died and scores were injured in the concert, unleashing panic among families of concertgoers. The agency, which had not sent a single reporter to the event, had to apologize later for reproducing social media, unverified information.
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