The CEO of Paradocs, the medical company that worked Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, said medics at the deadly event had to treat 11 people in cardiac arrest at the same time. Speaking with CNN on Monday (Nov. 15), CEO Alex Pollak spoke out for the first time about what he called the medical staff’s “impossible” task.
“This is something I’ll have nightmares about for the rest of my life,” he said. “The 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 through. Even though we’re medical professionals [and] we should be used it, you can’t get used to something like that.”
Pollak said his medical team at the festival had enough staff members and resources to treat the injured attendees, but that the crowd itself made it very difficult to render medical aid.
“We were doing CPR on the back of carts trying to get out of that crowd,” he said, adding that medical staff pushed through the crowd to try and get to victims despite the dangerous surging.
“People were jumping on top of the carts; they were pulling us off people. They thought it was a joke,” he said of the crowd.
According to Pollak, Paradocs had enough resources prepared for a 70,000-person audience; larger than the 50,000-person crowd that attended.
“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.”
Pollak added that while his company did not have the authority to stop the show, he believes cutting it short could have caused a riot. The festival has now resulted in 10 deaths, the most recent victim being 9-year-old Ezra Blount. On Tuesday (Nov. 16), funeral services were reportedly held for 22-year-old Bharti Shahani as well as two other victims.