Grandstand collapses at Gold Coast music festival
Three people have been injured after a grandstand collapsed at a sold-out music festival in Coolangatta on Sunday afternoon.
The temporary seating – set up on a section of beach for the Red Hot Summer Tour – buckled about 2.30pm during a performance by Boom Crash Opera.
On-site staff from 1300 Medics assessed 18 patients injured in the incident.
One person used their own transport to go to hospital for a reported ankle injury.
A spokesperson for Queensland Ambulance Service said while they weren’t called to respond to the initial incident, but paramedics attended two people with back pain later in the afternoon.
A spokesperson for Queensland police confirmed they were called to a reported “industrial incident” at the festival site on Marine Parade about 2.50 pm, but were no longer involved in the situation.
One of the event’s organisers addressed the crowd after the incident, expressing his concerns for the people who were in the grandstand and promising them full refunds.
“The people sitting in that grandstand, I hope everyone’s OK because, let me tell you, I was standing stage-right and I watched that happen and my heart just sank,” he said.
“I’ve got no words for the way I felt for those people who are going through that traumatic experience.
“Every single person who was in that grandstand will be fully refunded their ticket by Ticketmaster.”
The Red Hot Summer Tour is a national festival playing in Coolangatta, Ballarat, Mornington, Brisbane, Melbourne and Glenelg.
Australian Crawl and Men At Work headlined the sold-out Gold Coast show with support from Birds of Tokyo, Eskimo Joe, Vika & Linda, Boom Crash Opera and Ella Hooper.
The event was paused during the incident and people were evacuated from the stand. It will continue as planned tonight.
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