Pukkelpop Festival Storm Rampage - Stages Collapse, 5 Dead (Intense Footage)

Don't know how many countries have covered this story, but if you haven't already heard it:

Thursday 18th of august a huge unexpected storm has hit the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium, one of the biggest festivals in Europe. Lots of stuff blown away, tents from camping grounds blown away, trees ripped out of the ground, flew into full stage tents, stage tents collapsing... This has resulted in 5 deaths and numerous serious injuries (a few people still fighting for their lives). The rest of the festival has been cancelled now (which seems ... appropriate).

A bunch of my friends were there... I'm glad that they are all OK

crazy footage going around:

Storm hitting during Skunk Anansie, who had to stop performing abruptly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w3ZsAb5ikA

on the camping grounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIGiekIW418

@ 1:58 pay attention to the right to see one of the lighting towers fall over, somehow the camera man didn't notice that.

party tent collapsing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okyx6HbpHmI

tree falling on different party tent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F7F14moHUI

tree falling through another party tent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i52kwAzlOwU

......

It's my favourite festival, been there 5 times, I'm always looking forward to see the line-up. If it doesn't interest me, I'm not going .... thank god for those many bands I didn't want to see, I guess. Thanks Foo Fighters ... that's a li'l joke right there I just told myself to laugh away my shock lol amiright

.....

fuck

Looks like it took only 5 mins to completely ravage the festival.

couldn't post this because of "too much media in your post" balony

short footage, but at the very last second you can see the pillars and big screen going down

It's a terrible tragedy.

Cool to see the #hasselthelpt thing though.

Not cool to see so many idiotic reactions by and in the media.

Glad all of your friends are ok!

not much to say. the videos are astounding. the weather can reduce anything to it's most beautiful and terrifying but human element. very sad that people died. if i was there i would have been cowering in the corner well before the storm hit.

Nature always wins.

wtf is with all these stages collapsing?!

dude what is up with nature this summer?

This is coming just after that stage collapse at the indiana state fair.

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Climate change is real.

Utterly fucking mad, very tragic :(

  On 8/20/2011 at 2:59 AM, Braintree said:

Nature always wins.

no, nature always weathers(v.) too bad so many people see themselves at odds with nature/in competition with their own essence that they allow it to win.

get used to this extreme weather, folks. and remember... global warming isn't real.

stage collapse in ottawa in july:

[youtubehd]dfqpXNfywT4[/youtubehd]

stage collapse in indiana last week:

[youtubehd]SRkdwrmzYXg[/youtubehd]

definitely seems to be a theme.

  On 8/20/2011 at 6:43 AM, digit said:

get used to this extreme weather, folks. and remember... global warming isn't real.

we surely never had storms of this kind in the last 2000 years!

doesn't mean it's real

  On 8/20/2011 at 6:45 AM, chaosmachine said:

stage collapse in ottawa in july:

 

[youtubehd]dfqpXNfywT4[/youtubehd]

 

stage collapse in indiana last week:

 

[youtubehd]SRkdwrmzYXg[/youtubehd]

 

definitely seems to be a theme.

as does obesity... correlation?

  On 8/20/2011 at 8:39 AM, impotentwhitecapitalist said:

doesn't mean it's real

exactly. here's a cool graph

also, this is the same festival where the Ou Est Le Swimming Pool member killed himself last year

if i were the organizer of Pukkelpop, i wouldn't know how many of these kind of blows i could take

  On 8/20/2011 at 6:23 AM, impotentwhitecapitalist said:

  On 8/20/2011 at 2:59 AM, Braintree said:

Nature always wins.

no, nature always weathers(v.) too bad so many people see themselves at odds with nature/in competition with their own essence that they allow it to "win".

fixd

Considering the type of winds/weather you can get in open places it should be assumed that any built structure needs to have a relatively indestructable set up. Maybe after these tragedys more work will be put into them in future.

Thats insane, cant believe how strong that wind goes

Yeah a storm like that is very rare, I'm not sure how you can account for that. I was 100km away at that time and it was nowhere as strong as the stuff in the video's. The size of the hailstones is insane, haven't seen that since childhood.

I wouldn't hold the organizers accountable for the victims, it's just bad luck.