"This is something I have nightmares about": CEO of medic company hired for Astroworld Festival recalls tragedy
The head of a private medical company hired to work the deadly Astroworld music festival defended the staff who were at the event, calling it a night he will never forget in an interview with CNN. Ten people died and dozens of others were injured in a crowd surge two weeks ago at the festival founded by rapper Travis Scott.
ParaDocs CEO Alex Pollak told CNN on Monday that his staff of more than 70 had, at one point in the evening, the "impossible" task of treating 11 people who simultaneously went into cardiac arrest. Complicating matters were other uninjured concertgoers, who, according to Pollak, thought that the patients receiving treatment was a joke. The medical personnel were administering CPR to people on the backs of carts as other were jumping on top of the carts and pulling people off, Pollak said.
Although medical staff isn't supposed to endanger their own safety, they continued to go into the crowd to try to help those who were injured, Pollak said.
"This is something I have nightmares about for the rest of my life. My team is extremely broken up about it. Seeing so many young people getting CPR at one time, it's just something no one should have to go to through," Pollak told CNN. "Even though we're medical professionals — we should be used to it — you can't get used to something like that."
According to Pollak, ParaDocs typically has one medic for every 1,000 people at an event. With their staffing, they were prepared for a crowd of up to 70,000 people.
"We never came close to running out of equipment and supplies," he said. "We could have treated at least double the amount of patients. We never expected in our lives to encounter a situation like that. It was absolutely horrific."
There may have been up to 55,000 people at the concert — with up to 5,000 people entering the event illegally, Houston Police Chief Sam Peña said, according to CBS affiliate KHOU-TV. Although the venue is large enough to accommodate that many people, they were all pushed into a small space when Scott was on stage.
