Eyewitnesses and a crowd safety researcher have criticized Smukfest in Skanderborg after a packed Minds of 99 concert on Saturday, where the festival says 10 guests were squeezed at a bar and two fainted.
DR reports that about 38,000 people watched the Danish band on the Bøgescenen stage on Saturday evening. Some guests stood so tightly packed that they could not see the full concert, and singer Niels Brandt asked the audience to look after each other during the show.
Festival guest Stefan Florescu told DR that he helped a young woman up onto a nearby bar counter after she panicked, began crying and hyperventilating. He described the crowd pressure as dangerous and said that if she had fainted, people would likely have stepped on her.
Smukfest has stated that 10 people were squeezed at a bar during the concert and had to be helped over the counter by volunteer staff. Two of them fainted, according to the festival’s own account, which was also cited by B.T.
Elsewhere on the site during the same concert, 23-year-old Thea Bech Pedersen saw a woman collapse directly in front of her. Guests formed a circle around the woman and called for first-aid staff, she told DR. She estimated that it took around ten minutes before the samaritans reached them through the crowd.
Researcher points to Roskilde model
Morten Thanning Vendelø, a lecturer at Copenhagen Business School who researches audience safety at festivals, told DR that Smukfest does not appear to have sufficient control over crowd flow and pressure. He said the situation was close to a possible tipping point, even though it did not end in disaster.
Vendelø suggested dividing the area around the Bøgescenen into zones, as is done at the Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival. He also proposed more fencing around individual stage areas, and deciding in advance how many people to admit to each concert, then announcing that number to the audience.
Smukfest’s security chief, Thomas Rydahl, said in a press release that the festival is analyzing whether safety at the concert was adequate. Per Rydahl, it is too early to conclude what may need to be adjusted for large concerts in the future. He repeated a call for guests who experienced something unpleasant to contact the festival, noting that very few have done so.
Both B.T. and Politiken report that Smukfest linked the surge to a sudden crowd movement when the band began playing. According to B.T., people moved in from the Torvet and Lysningen areas, creating pressure near bars in the south-western part of Bøgepladsen. Politiken adds that the festival has acknowledged it did not account for the pressure outside the stage area.
