Source: Promo
Twin festivals Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park (similar concept to Reading & Leeds in the UK) are the biggest music festivals in Germany. When I headed to the Ring for the first time it was such an amazing experience that I vowed to return every summer, and bar one year, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing since then.
For over three decades, they have been busting out killer lineup after killer lineup year after year but 2016 seemed to be even more exceptional than usual. I started getting excited like October of last year and highly anticipated the weekend to be the highlight of my year. If only that were the case.
So last year for the festival’s 30th anniversary they moved locations from the renowned Ring to an old air base in Mendig, a tiny town in the volcanic Eifel region. Granted, last year organisation-wise was quite disappointing (you don’t even want to know how difficult it was to get clean drinking water – which arguably is the most important thing at a festival when temperatures were up to 35 degrees), but I thought “hey, they’ve been in the same location for 30 years and they’re probably not used to this change” and gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s the thing, the Eifel is known for its notorious rainy/stormy weather. Obviously it’s not like festival organisers can have control over the weather conditions, but there’s a certain degree of expectation for what they can do to prepare for these situations. Germany had had a few weeks of rain prior to the festival so obviously it wasn’t really a surprise that during Rock Am Ring weekend, it was the same.
Last year, the festival grounds were struck by lighting during Marilyn Manson‘s set and chunks of the stage started to fall apart. The only difference then was that came as a surprise amidst a weekend of consistent 30+ degree weather. This year however, it would have been a surprise if there were no rainstorms. So with that in mind, there should have been some emergency precautions in place for when the storm did occur.
On Friday 3rd June within a five minute warning there was thunder, lightning, hail – the whole ordeal. Everyone was told to seek shelter in a tent – fortunately Rock Am Ring had two tent stages so everyone bolted to safety. The main issue though is how ridiculously muddy the grounds were, that it wasn’t possible to reach these tents quickly, and by then we were all right in the midst of it with lighting striking literally a few feet away. Also, let me just remind you that this festival has around 90,000 visitors and in no way would all these people fit into the two tents they had.
There were also VIP tents around the festival but even in the core of a highly dangerous storm, security were not letting people without VIP wristbands take shelter. Right, I understand you’re doing your job but if it’s lives at risk and all these people want is to feel safe for 20 minutes in a VIP tent, I don’t see why that was a problem. Instead, people had to stand outside in the pouring rain and hope they weren’t going to get struck. Just in case you need an understanding of how bad this storm was, two people had to be reanimated and multiple were injured.
So taking this into consideration and the fact that weather forecasts were saying Saturday and Sunday would see the weather worsen, it was only logical that a huge proportion of attendees actually started leaving the festival that evening and many others were requesting promoter Marek Lieberberg to cancel the rest of the weekend. Sure, we would have all been disappointed but it would have been an understandable choice.
Saturday we were all left in limbo with intially a delayed opening time by about an hour, but soon that turned into four hours and before we knew it, they were saying if the festival were to go on, it wouldn’t be before 8pm. Whilst the festival promised us hourly updates on how things were looking/ if the show will go on, that wasn’t the case.
It wasn’t until about 9pm that bands started playing – obviously only a small proportion of all bands scheduled to play and at a new time slot. For those who were not camping and had to drive from the next town down (and there is a high percentage of attendees doing this), this was hardly enough time to prepare with the short notice they were giving – especially when we were promised hourly updates.
Here comes the worst part, those people who had been waiting at the festival all day with nothing to do, obviously had been drinking, because how else would you entertain yourself at a festival for hours when you should’ve been watching bands? Plus there was the added fact that the updated set times meant the last band ended at about 4am. Then Rock Am Ring decided to announce the festival was cancelled for the final day and everyone needed to have packed up their tents and leave by 12pm. Okay so suddenly everyone had 8 hours to sober up and get in shape to drive back home. Also, expecting tens of thousands of people to leave at the same time… you can only imagine how that turned out.
My issue with this year’s Rock Am Ring is this; I absolutely cannot blame them for the weather and would not expect them to take responsibility for that – but when it’s almost certain that such bad conditions would take place, and seeing what happened last year they could have prepared for the worst i.e. emergency evacuation systems and such. One of the main issues we faced was that first aid and medical staff weren’t able to reach victims promptly because of the mud. Tell me that’s not worrying. Then there’s the rumour that the only reason they persisted on putting on the festival on day two was that had headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers not performed, the festival would be liable to give everyone refunds. That’s shady as hell.
Unfortunately, Mendig just doesn’t seem like the right fit as Rock Am Ring‘s new home, and the past two years have been proof of this. For example, some patches of muddy ground were covered with tiny chunks of wood, making it easier to get around without sinking knee deep into mud and this honestly made such a huge difference. The question is why they decided to half ass it and didn’t cover the entire grounds. Who knows. One can only hope that in the upcoming years Rock Am Ring will find a better way to cope with worst case scenarios and slowly get back to its previous glory.
