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Pukkelpop, an anual music festival in Hasselt, Belgium, has been struck by disaster. Yesterday was the first day of the festival, and the festival and camping grounds were cramped with people. Big names like Rise Agianst, Foo Fighters, 30 Seconds To Mars, Skunk Anansie, NUFAN, Noah and the Whale and Eminem and much much more artists, including dnb and dubstep artists like Modestep, Skrillex and Netsky were supposed to perform on this 3 day during festival, but A storm started at something around 18.00 o clock.

I was there when it started. Skunk Anansie was performing, and at first the weather was nice, the concert was great. Then the sky turned darker, and it started to rain. Me and many others there greeted the rain with love, as it was very hot that day, and the day before. At first it was just rain, then the wind kicked in, leaves and sticks were flying at the mainstage and into people's back. Then the hail started.

The awefull weather caused various stages and music tents to collapse. Trees were felled by the wind. A big tree, 1.5 meters wide and 15-20 meters high just snapped like a twig and landed not 5 meters away from me. I kid you not. The apocalyptic weather caused the death of 5 people and 70 more are seriously injured.

Normally, I would have stayed for another few days, as I bought a ticket which allowed me three days entry to the festival ground and 5 days entry to the camping ground. Today was only the second day, and the first day of the festival, but my spirit to stay any longer was gone. Me and my friends deserted our ruined tents in the grass field which was turned into a mud pool, sometimes knee-deep, and took the first train home.

I've had it with the weather here in Belgium.

The festival has been ceased, and everybody will need to go home. I have no idea wether there will be a refund, but I don't think so, the artists need paying too.

Here is a live video footage of Skunk Anansie's show. I was there at that time, and I just started to run to the nearest cover as the hail began to fall. I lost sight of my friends, and it took hours to find each other again.

In this video you can't clearly see the hail, but I can assure you, there was hail. I still have bruises of the hail beating hard on my bare upper body.

Odd. Something like this happened in the US.

Wow. It rains apocalyptically here in Nepal, but that sounded awful.

Worst we had with the rain was a few hours ago, a section of our street collapsed into a sinkhole some 20 FT deep.

From what i've read the people were hit by a falling tree , surely the organisers could have predicted somethign like that happening in the even of a severe storm.

blackclaw1 wrote:From what i've read the people were hit by a falling tree , surely the organisers could have predicted somethign like that happening in the even of a severe storm.

Well, it's unlikely that a tree will come down even in very severe weather. Normally the tree would have to already be sick in order to come down, it's more common that a branch or two will be ripped off. If the tree was sick, which seems likely, it's unlikely that the organisers would spot that unless they had some kind of side business in tree surgery. They probably should have got some experts in when they heard about the storm coming, though.

htj wrote:

blackclaw1 wrote:From what i've read the people were hit by a falling tree , surely the organisers could have predicted somethign like that happening in the even of a severe storm.

Well, it's unlikely that a tree will come down even in very severe weather. Normally the tree would have to already be sick in order to come down, it's more common that a branch or two will be ripped off. If the tree was sick, which seems likely, it's unlikely that the organisers would spot that unless they had some kind of side business in tree surgery. They probably should have got some experts in when they heard about the storm coming, though.

Well that's the point. The organizers didn't know about a storm. The weather forecasters predicted nice sunny weather with only 11% chance of light rainfall. nobody expected this to happen.

Fair enough.

blackclaw1 wrote:From what i've read the people were hit by a falling tree , surely the organisers could have predicted somethign like that happening in the even of a severe storm.

That could be possible. I know the cause of death of only two of them. Two people were killed when they were just sitting inside their tent when something fell down on it. I don't know if it was a tree or a metal construct of some kind.

Scrazza wrote:Well that's the point. The organizers didn't know about a storm. The weather forecasters predicted nice sunny weather with only 11% chance of light rainfall. nobody expected this to happen

Ah, well, they can't really be held accountable then. Damned unfortunate luck, really. A nasty way for an event that is meant to be fun to go. My sympathies, Scrazza.

Oh wow, the weather really has been messed up lately... :/

Something like that happened in Indiana here in the states, it also killed five people when wind gusts knocked down the stage...

And again, something like that happened here, not sure where, but nobody was killed...these happened within a week or two of each other...

They should start having concerts in stadiums or civic centers...

The death count is now at seven people. The organization wasn't ready for this apparently.

Wow, this is pretty terrible.

I imagine being in such a large group of panicked people is a singularly hideous experience.

Oddly, the panic quickly stopped. We were ready to start a party again. People were singing "where's the party? Here's the party!' several times, and were yelling the usual festival yells. like 'Hoere!' which means 'Whores' in english. they were all laughing, except me and the minority of the 40000 festival visitors. I was too worried about contacting my ex girlfriend or finding her.