Hundreds of music-lovers have been injured in an incident at a Spanish music festival which saw a pier collapse at the ocean-side event.
As the New York Times reports, countless music fans had turned up to attend the two-day O Marisquiño sports and music festival in the Spanish city of Vigo when the incident occurred at around midnight on Sunday.
Witnesses report that hundreds of people were gathered to watch rapper Rels B from a nearby pier, when a 40-metre section of the structure collapsed, sending attendees into the water below.
While divers and rescue workers searched frantically for those who may have been trapped by the debris of the incident, no fatalities were reported, though 300 people are listed as injured, while a further nine were admitted to hospital.
One witness, Aitana Alonso, spoke to Faro De Vigo about the incident, explaining that “The floor went down like an elevator, it was a matter of five seconds.”
“It broke and we all fell in. People were falling on me, I was having trouble getting out, trying to get out and skating, my foot got stuck in the water, I got it out, a guy gave me a hand and I went out. There was a girl with blood on her head.”
“There were a lot of people there, nobody expected it, the boards were up,” she continued. “I had people underneath, screaming that I could not get out, I was overwhelmed, I thought I was not going out, I was trying and falling down again.”
At this stage, it’s not clear whether the incident was caused by having too any people on the pier, or whether structural reasons are to blame, though Enrique López Veiga, the president of the Vigo port authority, explained he believed the collapse occurred “probably either because of excess weight or jumping by the audience.”
Organisers of the festival released a statement noting that their events “fulfilled the security conditions required by the law,” while mayor Abel Caballero has revealed that there will be an investigation into just what caused the pier to collapse.
Check out a Canadian news report on the pier collapse:
