This year’s festivities again brought thousands to the downtown scene to experience march’s festivities. Along with the crowds, brought congestion, riots, overflowed traffic into residential areas, damaged property, large amounts of trash, outbreaks, and an overall poorly controlled chaos. The writer of this article is correct in saying that the amount of employed enforcement authorities were on the lacking side this year. Something as great as SXSW is going to gain in attendance each preceding year. For example, take a look at the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota. Every year more and more people attend. Throw some alcohol in the mix with a bunch of partiers and incidences are bound to happen.
This was my first year to attend SXSW, and I too observed the difficulty EMS and other officials would have in getting to sites of emergency. It’s very poor foresight on the City of Austin’s planning the festivities. Riverside could be best described as a parking lot, with the only traffic actually crawling along being outbound. How can this be corrected in the future? It seems a bit ridiculous to suggest road or lane closures for emergency vehicles but what sort of lawsuit and damage could be avoided if the emergency personnel were able to travel throughout downtown. It’s understood there’s a bit of laxness during SXSW, open containers overlooked, scents of cannabis wafting through the air, and loud individuals having a good time. However, it shouldn’t take a bad incident to expose the poor preparation. The riot at the Auditorium Shores definitely exposed some flaws in the security.
It’s easy to point out flaws, but the author doesn’t propose any solutions to the problems he/she addressed. It’s easy to see that the author is displeased, which is understandable, with the events that occurred this year downtown but suggests little to fix the problem. Often times rules and laws are made because of an incident to prevent further incidents, but this sort of behavior, reactions by the crowd and outnumbered police festivities isn’t a first. Sturgis, Woodstock, Mardi Gras, etc. could have been examined and this year’s SXSW could have taken a different turn. Also, planning officials and councils could have taken a look at the attendance years past and noticed a trend in growth and could have estimated the attendance and planned accordingly. It’s unfortunate this years events and the lack of preparation for the “March Madness”, but lessons learned in hindsight can be costly and should be avoided.
You can read the article from the Austin Statesman here.
