Nine people rushed to hospital from Listen Out music festival
Nine people were taken to hospital from Listen Out Festival on Saturday night, despite a strong police, security guard and paramedic presence in place to avoid fatal drug overdoses that have marred previous events.
NSW
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Nine people were taken to hospital from the Listen Out Festival on Saturday night, including three urgent admissions.
NSW Health said drugs were likely to have been a factor in six of the cases. All were people aged in their 20s.
A strong presence of police, security guards and paramedics had been stationed at both Listen Out in Sydney and Yours and Owls in Wollongong — the first two events of the NSW music festival season — in a bid to avoid fatal drug overdoses that have marred previous events.
A crowd of up to 40,000 patrons was expected to attend the over-18s Listen Out event at Centennial Park.
While the majority of the crowd made it through the gates without incident, dozens were denied entry and other would-be party goers were escorted from inside the venue by police.
Richard Geisenhart was among those refused entry after attempting to take in what he described as a “small bottle of alcohol”.
The 18-year-old, who had travelled with friends from Canberra, described security measures at the festival as “over-the-top”.
“The security and scrutiny around festivals has been because of the deaths but I would attribute that to there not being enough education or having pill testing,” he said.
“So many people take drugs at these events. If they’re going to do it you may as well have systems in place set up to make sure they do it safely.
“In the ACT they’ve had testing at festivals. No more people do it, it’s just safer because you’ve got testing.”
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The event came as Labor, the Shooters and the Greens MPs overturned tougher music festival regulations in the NSW Upper House.
Organisers of the festival, however, agreed to abide by the strict measures anyway.
NSW Health said 10 patrons had been taken to hospital for drug-related illness at last year’s Listen Out event in Sydney, including four “urgent cases” and one patient who required “critical care on-site” before being admitted to hospital.
The figure was up from seven hospital admissions due to drug related illnesses at the 2017 event and more than triple the three admissions in 2016.
Adelle Robinson, the director of Fuzzy Operations — the organiser of the event — told the committee overseeing the regulations that she was “not exactly sure why” the event had been classified as a “high risk” festival.
She said “there was a definite reputational damage” from being included on the list of high-risk events and that “everyone has been operating in an atmosphere of fear”.
Ms Robinson said organisers had also paid $171,927 based on patron-numbers at last year’s event under the “user-pay police bill” used to fund officers stationed at the event.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian commended Listen Out organisers for working with authorities to “act as though the regulations are still in place”.
The event line-up included Cosmo’s Midnight, Diplo and Australian record producer Flume.
Originally published as Nine people rushed to hospital from Listen Out music festival