Pukkelpop Disaster

[HereBeMonsters]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14582448

Awful. I was there two years ago on my stag do (on the way to the 'ring) and had one of the best times of my life. Sadly it looks like at least two, possibly five people have been killed. They've cancelled the remainder of the festival, according to other sources. Terrible.

[xe mini]

Sad news indeed, not what you expect on a summers day festival.

[HereBeMonsters]

When we were there in 2009 there was a massive storm as well, but it just co-incided with Deftones playing Passenger then Hole In The Earth, so it was brilliant, even though we were soaked to the skin, and I don't even remember watching Offspring who were on afterwards.

This is a whole other dimension though. Just hope the death toll doesn't rise further.

[mrmr96]

Was that this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkdwrmzYXg

[Russ35]

That's the 3rd outdoor stage collapse in the last month. One collapsed in Canada in July while Cheap Trick were playing and then last weekend 5 were killed in Indiana.


Canada : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa1-BmPC4c&fea...

Indianna : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14520194

[MartinM]

Shocking and very sad news. I went with a few mates in 2003 and had a great time. We were some of the oldest people there by far. Unlike Glastonbury, the punters are about 80-90% teenagers. We found it funny how staid the Belgian kids were on the first day or so, and by the last day they were wild, tipping up the Portaloos and having mass food-fights in the camping fields, there were catering-sized jars of beetroot and rollmops flying everywhere! I doubt the festival will have the same atmosphere for a long time

[s3fella]

Russ35 said:

That's the 3rd outdoor stage collapse in the last month. One collapsed in Canada in July while Cheap Trick were playing and then last weekend 5 were killed in Indiana.


Canada : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa1-BmPC4c&fea...

Thankfully Mommy's allright, Daddy's allright, they just seem a little weird....

Bad jokes aside, is this Pukkelpop place where that British pop guy who'd performed lobbed himself off a lighting tower last year?

[FarleyRusk]

The Dutch weather people explained that the disaster at Pukkelpop was caused by a "microburst" (mass of cold air descending) at exactly the wrong place and time. If it had happened 1km further up or on one of the 363 days in the year when there isn't a festival in Hasselt, then it probably wouldn't even have made the Belgian news.


From Wikipedia:
A microburst is a very localized column of sinking air, producing damaging divergent and straight-line winds at the surface that are similar to, but distinguishable from, tornadoes, which generally have convergent damage. There are two types of microbursts: wet microbursts and dry microbursts. They go through three stages in their life cycle: the downburst, outburst, and cushion stages. The scale and suddenness of a microburst makes it a great danger to aircraft due to the low-level wind shear caused by its gust front, with several fatal crashes having been attributed to the phenomenon over the past several decades.

A microburst often has high winds that can knock over fully grown trees. They usually last for a couple of seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downburst