The downpour rendered the festival and campgrounds an increasingly inconvenient mud pit over the first days of the festival, but it wasn’t until the final performances ended on Saturday, September 26th that the incidents in question began.
Festival goer and Washington DC-based media professional Julie Orsini opted to stay in a hotel instead of camping in between the hours that the festival was open to the public, and was lucid enough to contribute a detailed account of the events that followed:
“The way it worked was we didn’t get picked up directly from the festival site. When we got there [at the beginning of the day] we had to take a bus to the festival site and that was five miles. So we were in this long line at the end of the night and couldn’t see the end of it – it was 1:30 at this point – and they told us to get in the line for an Uber or taxi.”
“So we sit in this line about an hour and a half after the festival ended. We then get to the end of it only to discover that the line ended into this massive mob of angry people, and all the shuttles had filled and they had already left. So they kept us in this line promising Ubers at the end of it, or shuttles to Ubers, and there were none.”
Orsini purports that there was only one security guard visible in the area where the mob formed who could not answer any of the unruly masses’ questions, and refrained from explicitly acknowledging that no shuttles were expected to come. They only instructed attendees to remain where they were, apparently as a short-term measure to control the thousands-deep crowd that had accumulated by then.
After roughly half an hour passed with no promising developments, a group of attendees began a trek on foot down the road leading out of the festival grounds. As much as anyone involved with the music world might like to reinforce that drug use isn’t a key component of EDM culture, the reality of the matter is that countless patrons were undoubtedly under the influence of alcohol as well as illicit substances, finding themselves in danger as they risked exhaustion over the course of the trek. In addition, temperatures dropped to the low 60s, making the trip especially uncomfortable for anyone wearing typically minimal festival attire.
Also, as echoed by innumerable members of this charge, the path was unlit and just as muddy if not more so than the festival grounds. As they trudged along the sides of the road, shuttle buses departing from the event skirted dangerously close, and some attendees even formed human barricades in front of the vehicles in a desperate attempt to indirectly get the attention of anybody involved on the logistics side who might be able to give them answers.
Orsini speculates that the people in the shuttles must have left the event before it ended, securing their spots in the few shuttles available. More importantly, though, there were shuttles leaving the event. As such, it stands to reason that the inclement weather conditions were not keeping shuttle buses from traveling the length of the road to the festival grounds, and other factors were responsible for the unavailability of transportation.
Orsini says:
“They obviously did not account for the amount of people that needed rides home, and it’s not like that was any surprise to them; they could see who got day passes versus who was camping. So if they’re trying to blame it on the rain, the obvious fact of the matter is that they didn’t organize enough transportation for us.”
Five miles into their trek, Orsini and company spotted a police officer and approached him for assistance. The officer urged them to turn off their cellular devices and keep walking for just one more mile, assuring them that taxis would be waiting for them. After that mile, they found the location described by Orsini at which shuttles picked them up earlier in the day. At this location, however, they discovered another angry mob.
A line had formed in front of two uniformed Uber representatives, who promised them that rides with Uber representatives would be arranged on a first-come-first-serve basis. They informed the attendees that Uber vehicles would arrive every five minutes shortly after that point.
