photo Juan Vicent/El MundoThe Festival Internacional de Benicassim was forced to close early tonight. A large fire (looked like a brush fire) across the road from the site and extremely high winds meant that the fib organisers had to literally pull the plug on the event, plunging the entire site into darkness. The 70km winds have apparently damaged the stages. The Fib Club - a plastic bubble, was closed earlier in the evening.
It is very dark and the extraordinarily high winds are causing a dust storm. It is apparently mayhem and thousands of people are leaving the site, Queues for taxis are huge and the formerly happy crowd are more than a little disgruntled. Tom Tom Club were apparently in the middle of their set when the PA and lighting rigs started to wobble. Paul Weller's set was cut by 10 minutes it was at this point the power went off . There is a rumour that tonight's headliners, Kings of Leon are considering trying to appear tomorrow as they were previously scheduled to have a day off.
More as we get it ...
Posts
5 comments:
thankyou for updates! My daughter is there at Benicamp and we are obviously worried sick!Awaiting text messages, her first time away abroad alone!
im here in castellon waiting to hear if kol will play tonight. last night was like a war zone. at one point i wondered if we were gonna have a few deaths. i left after the toms came on. luckily. met a few people today in castellon who have been evacuated from beni camp sites and all their gear and tents got blown away. they were pretty stressed. i felt bad for them but there are hundreds heading out to near by towns trying to get hotels. its not cool. i think i´ll have my v festival next year. also on 1st night oasis power was cut twice. and the weather was fine, so the storms caused havoc. for the biggest acts in the world to play, and even the big tv screens fell down!!! it make sme wonder if this place has the balls to put on a fest. ross.
What about the scumbags who looted the tents of people evacuated from the area!!!
Piss off back to v "festival" then Ross. The spirit in the campsite and the hard work of the organisers was enough to get this festival back on it's feet and going again saturday night, after a freak extreme weather situation. Any festival would of been shut down by that. Beni "had the balls" to bounce back.
But you didn't see this, hiding away in your cosy apartment.
The TV screens didn't fall down. Festival structures have anemometers to detect wind speed. They'll have been lowered safely to prevent them falling down.
I'm with Martin on this. We camped through the winds. We made friends with people we wouldn't have met otherwise, helped people who needed a hand securing their tents, and generally got more into the festival spirit than anyone you'll ever meet at V Festival.
Oasis have had sound problems throughout their tour. It's a little too regular now for them to blame it on the festival, it's clearly either the band's gear, or them trying to gain publicity.
The wind and fire are hardly the festival's fault. Even if they had been as prepared as some people seem to think they should have been, there is no way the bands could have gone on with the amount of dust that was flying around the crowd.
The only thing that the festival organisers did to piss us off was start rescheduling bands without communicating it properly. It wouldn't have taken much to put big signs above the wristband check at the entrance saying "Friendly Fires will be on an hour early" etc...
Other than that, it was an amazing festival, and I can't wait for next year already.
Post a Comment