Bloc festival closed amid chaotic overcrowding
One of the UK's largest electronic music festivals was shut down last night after fears about safety at the new London Pleasure Gardens next to Royal Victoria Dock.
Amid chaotic scenes, police had to help people leave the renovated brownfield site after concerns about overcrowding escalated.
The festival was meant to conclude today but organisers have cancelled the event and told people to stay away.
Rapper Snoop Dogg was the headline act while Orbital, Gary Numan and and roster of other acts were lined up for the 60,000 sqm space in the shadow of the Millennium Flour Mill.
One concert goer, Jamila Scott, said that there were two hour queues and people had burst over the fence.
She told dummymag.com: "People surged toward the front and jumped over the barriers by the toilets. There was then a stampede, with scores of people jumping over. Security went insane, screaming and shouting to try and stop it. Eventually though, they gave up and let anyone in."
Another person caught up in the chaos was Scott Stewart. He said: "I saw people getting crushed against metal fences when they were waiting to get in. At points crowds pulled down a fence and charged in as they got so fed up. I was genuinely afraid for my own safety."
Music writer Dan Hancox tweeted: "Bloc is um a disaster right now. We're in the middle of a car crash. Could it just be shut down?"
Lauren Strain wrote: "Scary, and very nearly led to injuries; all we were told was 'move back' - where to exactly?"
Police used a metal fence to pen crowds into separate areas until they left.
A statement from LPG last night said: "We can confirm that this morning at 00:45, following advice from the Metropolitan Police, Bloc was subject to a controlled shut down due to health and safety concerns.
"London Pleasure Gardens are currently co-operating with police to ensure all visitors leave the site and commence their onward journeys safely.
"Our number one concern is always public safety, and sometimes tough decisions need to be made by on-site security, but we always act as we believe is necessary at the time to best protect visitors."
Ticket prices had ranged from £55 to £125. There was no immediate news about refunds.
Before today's event Bloc said: "By now everyone will have heard that Bloc 2012 was closed due to crowd safety concerns.We are all absolutely devastated that this happened, but the safety of everyone on site was paramount.
"Given the situation on the ground, we feel that it was the right decision to end the show early. Bloc will not open on Saturday so please don't come to the site."
It is the first time the Bloc festival had been staged outside a holiday camp.
London Pleasure Gardens opened last weekend with the Paradise Festival. The opening was delayed by a few hours because the site was not ready and it was clear during that event that work still needed to be done.
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Read The Wharf's
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Me and my boyfriend were there and the whole thing was a shambles from the start.
On the website and on our e-tickets it stated that the gates open at 2.00pm, after two hours of being moved to different gates they eventually opened at 4.00pm
When we got into the festival, we thought the layout was confusing because there was a boat, a few food and beer tents and a couple of rides (which were extortionate) and that was it! So we eventually got pretty bored, until we discovered another pathway of the festival which led to nothing.
The only act we really got to enjoy was Amon Tobin, after that the queues were too large and too unorganised to stand in. So we were left wondering around the site with nothing to do until 6.00am for the site to close.
You can imagine the shock when we were told to leave just after twelve. We had nowhere to go because we were planning on enjoying the festival until stated closing times. (6.00am) There were no trains to get us back home as we dont live in London, so the shuttle busses were useless, and too packed.
When we asked a policeman if there was somewhere warm we could go, he simply replied "I dont know." Soon after, all the lights were switched off leaving us and other festival goers literally in the dark.
We spent the night sleeping on some grass outside the DLR station because we had nowhere to go, which was not only uncomfortable but also dangerous. Come 5.00am we bumped into other Bloc festival goers from Belgium who had also had to sleep rough due to this complete and utter disaster of an event.
I will be posting my story on every news/ blog website about the Bloc disaster because I dont feel like a refund of the tickets is enough after the trauma they have put me, my boyfriend and others through!
All we wanted to do was have a good time and see some of our favourite artists.
Considering what happened at the event I think the crowd, who acted pretty politely, deserve more than just a refund.
Well done for posting and you are right you do deserve more than a refund but I hope you at least get that. What a shambles.
refund and more necessary what a shamble but well done for posting the above because at this moment there is still no information
this is a rubbish comment service
lets hope thats the end of bloc greedy bas#ards