AUSTIN, Texas — The first weekend of the Austin City Limits Music Festival is now over and, as expected, Austin-Travis County EMS was busy responding to incidents at the festival.
Each day there were more than 70,000 people in attendance, which is why ATCEMS had a command center at the festival so medics could quickly respond to incidents and be able to treat people on site.
From Friday through Sunday, they had 234 incidents at the festival. Of those, 16 people were taken to the hospital, which they said is low for how many people they treated.
Here is the breakdown of incidents at ACL for each day:
- Friday: 61 incidents, four transports
- Saturday: 85 incidents, five transports
- Sunday: 88 incidents, seven transports
They did have one person who had to be taken to the hospital for cardiac arrest, but ATCEMS leaders said the most common problem they saw was people overheating. Many people were dizzy and light-headed.
"If you're planning your day and you're going to be out in the heat all day and in the sun all day, pre-hydrate,” said Cpt. Darren Noak, the public information officer for ATCEMS. “So, the night before, start drinking water, continue to drink water and just keep up with that as you go through the festival and the day.”
He added that alcohol and drug use can cause people to become even more dehydrated. He said people should not being doing illegal drugs, but they want to put out an extra reminder to not take drugs or medicine of any type from other people at the festival.
“We encourage people, do not take any of those medications or drugs because, you know, in this current environment, you just don't know what might be contained in that,” said Cpt. Noak.
They did see multiple scooter crashes over the weekend, but said that is expected. They said most of them were not too serious. He encourages people who drive in the area to keep an eye out for scooters and pedestrians during weekend two of ACL.
When it comes to crime, 311, the city’s information and non-emergency line, said they had eight thefts from ACL reported over the weekend and that two of those were phones. They said they received no calls about people parking illegally in the surrounding area.
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