100 Hospitalized At Electric Daisy

There are two ways media reports are portraying the Electric Daisy Carnival that took place in Los Angeles Friday and Saturday.

Many reports hail the festival as a success drawing almost 200,000 electronic music fans. Then there are those reports about injuries resulting in more than 100 people taken to the hospital.

From all accounts, this year’s Electric Daisy was a success. More than 180,000 fans descended on the festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and Exposition Park that featured a lineup including DJs like will.i.am, Deadmau5 and Kaskade. Its first outing in 1997 that drew only 5,000 people, according to the Los Angeles Times.

However, there are those reports about 226 injuries making the rounds, 114 of which required a trip to a local hospital.

Apparently some of those injuries resulted when people without tickets tried rushing the gates in attempts to gain entrance without buying $75 tickets. Other injuries reportedly occurred when people already inside tried to climb over barriers to get into the festival’s VIP areas.

“It was like a waterfall of people,” Andres Casas told the Times, saying he saw hundreds rush onto the field, climb fences and trash concession tents. “They actually had to stop the music and the emcee yelled to stop acting like fools.”

Evidently the concept of trying to turn Electric Daisy into a freebie by rushing the gates is “something that’s very new” according to one organizer.

“It’s not part of the culture at all,” Pasqualle Rotella, founder of Insomniac Events which stages Electric Daisy, told the Times. “They [gate crashers] are not here for the music, and I don’t think they’re here for the event.”