Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy: The 7 Biggest Revelations from Netflix’s New Documentary

“I believe Astroworld 2021 was not an accident,” crowd safety expert Scott Davidson says during the new Netflix documentary Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy. “It was an inevitability due to the lack of foresight and the abandonment of basic safety protocols.” Davidson’s expert breakdown is only one of many insights the documentary offers into what happened on November 5th, 2021, when Travis Scott’s headlining Astroworld Festival performance in Houston, Texas led to the deaths of 10 people.

The latest film in the Trainwreck series (which has also explored Woodstock ’99 and the infamous “poop cruise”) begins by taking a moment to remind the viewer about where we as a culture were in 2021 — just starting to re-enter the world post-lockdown. It’s that energy that amplifies the excitement around Scott’s performance that day, an energy that brought a diverse group of people to the event. Many of whom found themselves fighting to survive thanks to the massive crowds in attendance.

Watching Trainwreck really gives you an appreciation of how difficult it is to manage large crowds of people safely — an important responsibility, given the lives at risk from compression asphyxia. Lives like those of concertgoers Rodolfo Peña and Brianna Rodriguez, whose loved ones are interviewed in the documentary, their grief palpable over their loss. Below are the biggest revelations from the documentary, which is a sad watch, but a powerful one.

50,000 Tickets Were Sold… for a Venue that Could Safely Host 35,000

According to Davidson, Live Nation reportedly sold 50,000 tickets to Astroworld — without confirming whether 50,000 people would be able to safely attend the concert. In the aftermath, experts found that in reality, the space only had viewing capacity for 35,000. “Which would mean they planned for many thousands more people than could safely view Travis’ performance.” The documentary includes a text message from a festival organizer sent on October 26th: “I feel like there is no way we are going to fit 50k in front of that stage. Especially with all the trees!”

A Security Failure Early in the Day Made Things Worse

Early into Trainwreck, the documentary illustrates one big issue: While the sun was still shining that day, an untold number of concert-goers overran the security checkpoints at the venue — there’s ample footage of people knocking over fences and metal detectors in their excitement to get inside, beginning at 9:00 a.m. according to the Houston Chronicle. So, not only was the concert allegedly over capacity just based on ticket sales, there were ultimately an unknown number of people on the grounds beyond that tally.

The Venue Layout Was an Issue

With the aid of on-screen diagrams, Trainwreck reveals that attendees entered the audience area from the side of the stage, into a T-shaped barrier system. “This was supposed to make the stage safer, but instead its configuration created a trap on the left-hand side of the stage [where people were entering]. So the compression just built and built [and] people could not escape,” Davidson says.

Additionally, the main stage was solely reserved for Scott’s performance that night, which meant that thousands of concertgoers entered the arena at the same time.

Organizers Knew This Could Be Deadly Minutes Before Scott’s Performance

Travis Scott began playing at 9:02 p.m. that evening. At 9:00 p.m. a Live Nation employee sent the following text: “Stage right of main is getting crushed. This is bad. Pull tons over the rail unconscious. There’s panic in people’s eyes. This could get worse quickly. I would pull the plug but that’s just me. I know they’ll try to fight through it but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue. Someone’s going to end up dead.”

Again, this text was sent at 9:00 p.m. Two minutes before the performance started. And attendees interviewed for the documentary say that as the show began, they were already feeling like they couldn’t breathe, thanks to the way the crowd had amassed.

Travis Scott Kept Performing Even After Spotting Someone Needing CPR

At 9:42 p.m., Scott briefly paused mid-song to point out that someone in the crowd needed help. (At that point, definitely more than one person was in need of assistance.) But instead of stopping the show, he kept performing, which struck Kirby Gladstein, a photographer covering the show that night, as strange. “I’ve seen numerous artists stop a show — not just making sure somebody was okay, but stop the show. And nobody was doing that.”

It was at 9:51 that a Live Nation manager went backstage to talk to the audio engineer who would then be able to speak to Scott via his headpiece. The evidence includes a transcript of what the manager said: “We have four active CPRs going on, two are most likely dead. It is very very bad — there are more crush victims than I have ever seen in my 25-year career. We have to have a discussion in [Scott’s] ears, letting him know what’s going on. We need to shut this thing down in eight minutes at 10 o’clock.”

Scott would continue to perform until 10:13 p.m.

Whose Job Was It to Shut Things Down?

It was clear from the beginning of Scott’s performance that it shouldn’t go on. And in a better situation, Davidson says, “any key decision maker from police, fire, EMS or Live Nation should have been able to very quickly initiate a show stop process, what should have been as simple as a literal or figurative button to push.”

Unfortunately, in this case the event operations plan specified that only two people from Live Nation had the “delegated authority to stop the show.”

This included the police presence: Former Houston police commander Mark Lentini says on camera that the police department was paid by Live Nation to provide police security. “We don’t have any control over the planning, the strategies, security guards, any of that stuff. We’re there for law enforcement.”

Live Nation’s Perspective

The end of the documentary includes Live Nation’s response to the film’s allegations, which reads as follows:

“The sellable capacity for the venue was set by SMG Global and approved by the Houston Fire Department (HFD) before tickets went on sale. The number of tickets sold, and attendees on site did not exceed the approved capacity. HFD, SMG Global, and the Houston Police Department (HPD) were aware of the event plans, which were developed in line with safety codes. The Festival Safety & Risk Director and HPD representatives agreed to and executed an early show stop.”

Finally, something that’s less a revelation and more of an observation…

Nathan Fielder Might Have Some Insight Here

At the end of the film, Davidson says that “in all the failures of Astroworld, a common denominator is a failure to speak truth to power. There were many missed opportunities to speak up, for somebody to raise their hand and say ‘Time out. This doesn’t make sense. We’re going to hurt somebody.'”

This ends up being pretty much identical to the themes explored in Season 2 of The Rehearsal: Nathan Fielder digs into this topic through the lens of aviation safety, but his focus in the show is similar, examining the reasons why co-pilots in the cockpit might not speak up when they think their captain is making a mistake. The common denominator in both cases is simple: Speaking up saves lives.

Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy is streaming now on Netflix.