Olympic venue LiveCity Yaletown shut down after crowd rushes stage for Alexisonfire

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      LiveCity Yaletown was shut down early tonight (February 16) after hundreds of fans pushed towards the front and broke down a barrier separating the audience from Canadian hardcore band Alexisonfire.

      Less than 30 seconds into the group’s first song, frontman George Pettit ran to the front of the stage and quickly brought things to a halt.

      You knew it was coming.

      Front and centre, some 20 feet from the front row, I was taken off my feet as soon as the first chord was struck. As the young crowd swayed hard from left to right, pressing forward, people fell to the ground in every direction, many on top of one another.

      The barrier broke and staff and police immediately swarmed to what was left of the clearing between the audience and the stage. The band pleaded for people to move back.

      It wasn’t violent. I didn’t witness a single fight or any act of real aggression. And when called upon, the audience did comply and moved away from the stage.

      Song broke out and “O Canada” was repeated several times. One VPD officer stood atop a section of broken fence and pretended to act as the crowd’s conductor.

      It was obvious that several–if not many–people were hurt. At least one person was carried away on a stretcher. Since I’ve arrived home, local media outlets are reporting that as many as 20 people were injured with nine being taken to hospital.

      Alexisonfire apologized and said that they would return to Vancouver as soon as they could.


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      Comments

      40 Comments

      dthorne

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:12am

      I was lucky enough to be on the front left of the stage with my girlfriend, rather than the center. A lot of unfortunate people tonight. Way too many folks in there, way too many inebriated people, and that barricade couldn't have been built that well. Either way, pretty awful that a good deal of people had to get hurt.

      C.Wilson

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:30am

      The fans were all wearing black bandanas soaked in apple cider vinegar on their faces and the VISU had to pull out the automatic rifles and threaten to shoot them is they did not disperse.

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      Drunk Buster

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:30am

      5 Days in and I can see the downtown crowds are starting to get drunk and ugly. Not as happy-feely as last weekend. They are packing way too many people into these venues.

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      Travis Lupick

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:31am

      @dthorne, I don't want to hypothesize on exactly what went wrong. It's a little early for that. But I don't think the problem was too many people. LiveCity Yaletown is a big venue and when Alexisonfire took the stage, there was still a lot of room at the very back.

      And as for inebriated people, it's a dry venue that people had to stand in line for an hour for just to get in to (plenty of time to sober up).

      Padsock

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:41am

      This is a bloody outrage. I am a professional producer with 20 years experience in Rock Concert productions and I have been fully trained in crowd control dynamics by EPP in the UK. What the hell is going on with the organisation. This was not a professional Mojo crowd control barrier, whoever advanced the production for this show should be hung out to dry. This is shocking and you guys are so lucky that someone was not killed. The H&S standards here are woefull. Waken up Vancouver you are embarrassing yourself.

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      dthorne

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:45am

      Fair enough Travis. That was my first concert there, so I can't completely be sure of anything.

      I realized it was a dry venue. Just seemed like an awful lot of people were under the influence tonight.

      I guess overall I'm just really disappointed in everything that went down tonight. I'm really glad on how most people handled it, really glad on how George, Dallas (carrying a girl out), and the rest of the band handled it. Still disappointing to hear people boo, yell bullshit at a time like that.

      Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

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      Iwastheretoo

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:50am

      I think everyone genuinely felt bad about the situation. I was surprised that the crowd dispersed so peacefully, things could have been way worse and there was no rioting or chaos on the street after, people just left.

      I don't mean to point fingers but I can't understand how this happened. In my 25 years of going to rock shows, very large ones with crowds much larger than this show, I have never witnessed barricades coming down, bending or breaking like this.... they are there to suppress crowd surges.

      I am so glad that no one was killed - could have been WAY worse.

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      knowitall

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:50am

      LiveCity Yaletown can accommodate up to 8500 people, including staff and security. This is strictly enforced with the numbers being counted as people go through the security lines.

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      dthorne

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:53am

      I guess I assumed there were too many people in the crowd. Oops.

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      janneg

      Feb 17, 2010 at 12:56am

      Kudos to volunteers and on-site personnel for controlling what could have turned into a bad situation. we were on-site and while I don't think the venue was over crowded, I do agree that a lot of alcohol was consumed in the long line up to get in & very little police presence was felt in the line. It might have helped to turn away some of these very drunk young men before they got in and caused this incident. An unfortunate situation to blemish our games.