‘Your worst night out … but it never ends’: how the Pitch music festival descended into chaos and confusion

Attendees at Pitch festival were “dropping like flies” from severe heatstroke and drug use, and may have been put at risk by widespread disorganisation, workers at the festival have alleged.

The festival in Moyston, near Ararat in western Victoria, was due to run from Friday 8 March to the following Tuesday but was cancelled on the Sunday. Organisers were criticised for not calling it off earlier, despite the sweltering conditions and warnings from the Country Fire Authority (CFA) late on Friday night that it was safest for people to leave.

Three people paid to work at the festival and one volunteer have made a range of claims about the festival including:

• Staff levels were inadequate;

• Information about heat and fire risk was not communicated clearly;

• Some precautions to deal with the heat, promised by festival organisers, were not delivered.

“I’ve worked in similar environments before and never seen such widespread disorganisation,” said Tallulah Chellew, a peer-based harm reduction worker, who was employed in customer care at the festival. “It just feels like your worst possible night out, but it never ends.”

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The festival organisers, Untitled, denied preparations had been inadequate, but said the weather conditions had presented a “unique set of challenges”.

A spokesperson said: “The way our seventh edition unfolded on site presented us with a unique set of challenges, which we acknowledge in turn impacted our community and their experience of Pitch.

“It is standard practice for all festivals to review their emergency and communications plans following the conclusion of any event — this process is now well underway. We will also be working closely with all relevant authorities on our emergency preparedness and response plans … especially given the unique conditions that were experienced by several festivals in the region over the long weekend, to ensure they are robust.”

‘People were just dropping like flies’

On 6 March, the festival organisers, Untitled, emailed the expected 18,000 attendees – who had paid about $450 a ticket – warning “our seventh iteration will be a hot one” and said they would take precautions “to help create a safe and enjoyable festival experience”.

These included providing “shade coverage and overhead misting” at the main stage, as well as “misting cannons” at two other stages, misting fans, shaded areas and “ample water stations installed throughout the festival”.

Temperatures during the festival reached 37C, but those working at the festival said many of these promises were not delivered.

“There were no overhead misters, no water cannons at the stages, and definitely not ‘ample’ water stations. The misting fans were often broken or not on and were always placed in the sun,” said one volunteer, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

One staff member who worked as a supervisor, and also wished to be anonymous, said she saw one misting cannon by the main entrance to the festival and one at the food area, but not until the second or third day of the festival.

Untitled told the Guardian that patrons had access to ample shade, cooling misting fans, food and water, as well as permanent misting fans overhead on the main stage and mobile misting fans moved around the site, which were topped up regularly. They said the organisers doubled water capacity to 520,000 litres when it became apparent what the weather conditions would be like, and while some tanks may have been empty on occasion while awaiting a daily refill, ample water stations were available throughout the festival.

The three workers and the volunteer the Guardian spoke to all said they experienced severe dehydration or heatstroke, despite having better access to facilities than festivalgoers.

“I woke up every morning and felt like death,” Chellew said.

The volunteer said: “I drank so much water on the Saturday and I was still so dehydrated on the Sunday. Even before the event was cancelled, I already decided that I was going to leave on Sunday, because I just couldn’t [stay], it was unbearable.”

“They knew what the weather was going to be like; this event should have 100% been postponed,” she said.

Another worker, who has years of experience at festivals around Australia, said: “I was sitting in a shaded tent and I was drinking electrolytes constantly. I reckon it took me a week to get over it. I had all the signs of heat exhaustion - dark urine, the whole thing. We weren’t there for the whole festival, we weren’t using substances, I can only imagine how the kids were.”

The workers said they believed the extreme heat and uncertainty around whether the festival would run for the scheduled five days may have contributed to unsafe drug and alcohol use.

“There were moments where I was like: people are just dropping like flies out here,” said the volunteer, who stressed they had had a very positive experience volunteering at Untitled’s Beyond the Valley festival in January.

“Definitely you could see that people were just really struggling with the heat.

“Your [drug tolerance] limits in normal temperatures versus the heat is going to be very, very different.”

In response to questions about the effects of heat on drug use, Pitch organisers said they did not encourage or condone the use of illicit substances.

St John Ambulance said seven patients were taken to hospital from the event by ambulance. Antony Maugeri, a 23-year-old from Niddrie, was found unresponsive at 1am on Sunday. He was airlifted to hospital but later died at the Alfred hospital, Victoria police said.

Related: Australia sweats through third-hottest summer on record with hot and dry autumn predicted

The supervisor said she believed the uncertainty about whether the festival would be cut short factored in to people’s substance use. She said when it was announced that the music would stop on Sunday afternoon, she saw “a lot of people using different substances fairly recklessly” and staff witnessed an “escalation” of medical episodes over the following hours.

There is no suggestion this was the case in the events that led to Maugeri’s death, the cause of which remains unknown.

Other festivalgoers were concerned that if they had to leave the festival early they might be caught with drugs as they left, she said. Police did search patrons leaving the festival for drugs.

Twenty-minute walk to medical tent

Chellew said the number of people affected by the heat meant staff at the hubs became “a quasi-medical team without any of the proper training beyond a first aid certificate”. Chellew said on the Saturday night they personally dealt with four incidents requiring an ambulance to be called, including two major overdoses, as well as three incidents requiring the emergency response team.

Chellew said at one point a volunteer was left in charge of an entire hub – something meant to be the responsibility of staff – because they had to leave to deal with an overdose and the other staff member had just witnessed someone having a serious GHB overdose and wasn’t coping.

“I just said to [the other staff member]: ‘Are you going to be OK? Because I have to go off, because someone else is having an overdose.’ And she’s just crying, sitting down in this hub area. I turned to a volunteer … she doesn’t even have a walkie-talkie. I say, ‘Are you OK here for a bit? … I just have to deal with this.’

“Some managers and supervisors worked above and beyond, they worked really long hours, they stepped up in roles they weren’t supposed to,” they said.

The volunteer also said she was required to perform tasks meant to be performed only by staff – though not in a medical or emergency setting. She also said some services, such as shuttles coming to collect volunteers and staff at the end of shifts and drive them back to the campground, so they would not have to walk in the heat, were severely delayed or cancelled, which she says was due to staff shortages.

“There were not enough people. Volunteers were doing staff jobs. You could just tell that it was really, really understaffed,” she said.

Untitled said the processes for responding to emergencies and requirements of staff were developed in consultation with the relevant authorities and clearly communicated. They said counselling was available to all staff and volunteers who needed it after the event.

Chellew said there were long waits for the emergency response team. “On Saturday and Sunday, the emergency comms channel didn’t stop … there was constant patient transport.”

Because the ambulance and buggies used for transport were in such high demand, “people with mild-to-medium heatstroke … and high level intoxication were told to walk” to the medical tent, they said, which could take up to 20 minutes.

St John Ambulance said its medical team treated 543 patients at the event, which was low in relation to similar events, saying that up to 1,000 patients had been seen at similar festivals over a similar length of time.

It said it set up a full medical assistance team capable of advanced life support – akin to a field hospital – as well as roaming response crews, first aid posts and specialist response crews.

‘Complete confusion’ about cancellation

Most festivalgoers at the relatively remote site did not have phone reception or internet access and depended on the festival organisers for information.

Updates, including from the CFA, were displayed on large screens at the two entries to festival from the campgrounds, but staff said these were easy to miss if you were inside the venue or in a campsite.

“The communication was so shit,” the volunteer said. “Throughout the entire festival, the advice and things were changing and we just weren’t being updated properly … we would only find out things if somebody happened to walk by and they knew that there was different information.”

Late on Friday night, the CFA warned that “the safest option for those who are already on site is to leave the site tonight or early in the morning”. Pitch organisers told festivalgoers to follow CFA advice and stay away if they had not already set off for the site, but did not cancel the event.

On Saturday afternoon organisers announced that “programming will commence at 6pm today … and continue as scheduled for the remainder of the event”.

The festival was ultimately called off on Sunday, after the CFA declared a second total fire ban for the area. Thousands scrambled to leave the site, with people on social media reporting chaotic scenes.

Pitch organisers said they were in a situation where the fire danger rating fluctuated, but diligently followed the advice from all emergency authorities each step of the way, including rescheduling some music and buses into the festival on Friday. When the directive came on Sunday to cancel the festival, organisers took immediate action to cancel the festival, they said.

The volunteer said she found out the festival was cancelled only because she happened to walk past one of the two signs, despite having just come from the volunteer hub, where she said no one knew that information.

Chellew claimed there was “complete confusion” about the cancellation.

“When unexpected announcements dropped, hubs were flooded with concerned punters ... it was like we were trying to work in the dark.”

The supervisor said that when information finally filtered out that the festival had been cancelled, “it was just like a switch of everyone being normal and then just swarming the hubs getting enraged”.

The third person working at the festival said: “I think people were very confused and weren’t really sure when to leave or what had happened.”

She said she saw people who were confused about whether it was safer for them to leave the site on Sunday even if it meant driving with drugs in their system, or to stay an extra night despite the bushfire risk.

The festival organisers pointed to comments after the event by the CFA’s deputy chief officer for the region, Brett Boatman, on ABC radio.

“When we spoke with the festival organisers [on Sunday], and we requested that they cancel Monday’s activities, they did,” Boatman said. “We requested they commenced their communications around that by no later than 4pm [on Sunday] afternoon, which is what they did. And they also ceased their entertainment at 7pm.”

The festival provided a free shuttle service to transport people from the festival, and one staff member said there was “a good stream of buses going to Ararat and Melbourne”.

The volunteer said that in light of what she witnessed with communication at the festival she feared a bushfire emergency could have led to catastrophe.

“If a bushfire had happened, that would have been an absolute disaster in terms of communicating and then getting people out,” they said. “It’s a really, really terrifying thought … particularly on the Sunday, the wind really started picking up, you could just see how things could go from good to bad really, really quickly.”