What happened? A band of severe weather crossed Belgium from the west, as forecast, bringing heavy rain, thunder and lightning. When the system reached Limburg, it created what meteorologists call a downburst, characterised by extremely strong winds. The damage was local: According to the Hasselt prosecutor, who flew over the area, the hardest hit area is a strip no more than 60 metres wide. “The whole field was under water within a few minutes. It was unreal,” said Edwin Korver, one of the DJs playing at the festival. “People tried to get away, but stayed calm. Nobody panicked.”

The storm lasted barely a quarter of an hour, though it took much longer to determine the extent of the damage. Marquees had blown away; stage rigging collapsed; GSM masts and trees were felled.

Five people died and 140 more were injured, some requiring hospitalisation. As Flanders Today went to press, three of the injured were still in critical condition.

“This is the blackest day in Belgian festival history and also the blackest day of my life,” said Chokri Mahassine, organiser of the festival from its beginning in 1986. “When you organise a mass event like Pukkelpop, you have to take into account that something bad could happen. But a disaster on this scale I could never have imagined in my worst nightmare.”

In the aftermath of the damage, GSM coverage of the site area was saturated, and friends trying to find each other couldn’t make contact. Families at home also had trouble getting through on mobile phones. People began posting messages on Twitter offering lifts, food, showers, a place to sleep. Local companies opened up their offices for people to bed down.

The Red Cross handed out blankets and food, and city authorities took in stranded festival-goers – mostly young people who camp on site at the three-day festival – at a community centre and Ethias arena.

Acting prime minister Yves Leterme and federal interior minister Annemie Turtelboom were on the spot by 23.00; later the king and queen, who came back from holiday, visited the festival site.

At one point it seemed as if the festival might continue on Friday, but Hasselt mayor Hilde Claes soon announced it was cancelled. “We deliberately opted for a twophase plan: first announce that all performances on Thursday evening were cancelled, and then only a few hours later announce that the whole festival was off,” she explained. “So soon after the drama, there were just too many people on the grounds. The advice of the specialists was to communicate bit by bit. If we’d said right away that the festival was over it could have caused negative reactions and caused a threat to the security situation.”

The decision to call a halt was widely welcomed. Johannes Genard, lead singer of Flemish band School is Cool: “We should have been performing in the Marquee on Friday afternoon, but we’re behind the cancellation. You can’t go on having a big party if people have died just the day before.”

For the evacuation, De Lijn and the NMBS laid on extra buses and trains. Telenet opened up all broadband hotspots in railway stations across the country until 16.00 on Friday. By Friday afternoon, the site was virtually clear and the investigation of the causes under way.

Criticism of emergency plan

The city council of Hasselt is requesting that the federal government recognise the event as a natural disaster, thus liberating federal funds for compensation and clean-up. A memorial for the victims will take place this Thursday, 25 August, at 18.00 on Dusartplein in Hasselt.

Pukkelpop organisers, meanwhile, have been accused of three things: paying insufficient attention to the forecast of bad weather; using equipment that wasn’t sufficiently resistant to the weather conditions; and failing to communicate properly after the disaster, both to the festival audience and to the outside.

“Everything was tested, measured, inspected and double-checked,” said Mahassine. “This was force majeure, an act of God. A storm of that power was an extremely unlikely event. There’s very little material that could have stood up to it.”

Mayor Claes: “The scale of the damage illustrates that the storm that ravaged the festival was extremely exceptional.”

Fellow festival organisers paid tribute to Pukkelpop’s professionalism. According to Carlo Di Antonio of the Dour festival in Wallonia, the Pukkelpop organisers are “seriously professional people – an example for others in the sector…. If you had to stop everything every time there was the risk of a storm, you might as well give up entirely on open-air events in this country.” Ivan Saerens, another local festival organiser, said: “Flanders is one of the few places in the world that can be said to have a real festival tourism industry. There are a lot of people involved who really know what they’re doing. We can be proud of the expertise and professionalism there is in this country.”

Proximus reported that mobile operators had installed four times more extra capacity than last year, but still the networks were overwhelmed. “It’s a scandal,” said Mayor Claes. “The operators make good money out of people, but they can’t be bothered to do that bit extra during large-scale events”. Interior minister Turtelboom is to meet with the operators to discuss the question of extra capacity and also look into the use of social networks like Twitter and Facebook as an alternative communications tool at times of crisis.

Politicians React

Kris Peeters, Flemish minister-president: As it is every year, Pukkelpop should have been the perfect finish to a carefree summer. That the party has ended in tragedy is a shock for all of us. I wish all of those who have been affected strength.

Pascal Smet, Flemish youth minister: I can only imagine what the families of the victims are now going through. Respect also for the difficult but calm and courageous decision to bring the festival to an end.

Joke Schauvliege, Flemish culture minister: This edition of Pukkelpop turned into a nightmare before it even properly started. Nothing and no-one could stand up to this sudden violence of nature. What should have been a cultural high-point for music and music lovers has ended in drama. Courage to all those festival-goers affected and courage, too – and our thanks – to the emergency services.