HOUSTON — For the first time, the head of the private medical company hired by the Astroworld organizers is speaking about what happened during the deadly music festival that left 10 dead and hundreds more injured.
The CEO of ParaDocs is defending more than 70 staff members who were at Astroworld trying to save lives.
Alex Pollak said at one point, medical staff had the impossible feat of treating 11 people going into cardiac arrest at the same time; all of these as a crowd surge was taking place.
Pollak said his staff is not allowed to go into a situation where they might get hurt, but they kept going into the crowd to help.
He said his team was doing CPR on the back of cart trying to get out of the crowd and concertgoers were jumping on the carts and pulling them off people. He added that some people thought it was a joke.
RELATED: Astroworld Festival timeline: Cell phone videos show how tragedy unfolded at Travis Scott concert
“This is something I have nightmares about for the rest of my life. My team is extremely broken up about it. Seeing so many young people getting CPR at one time, it's just something no one should have to go to through,” Pollak said. “Even though we're medical professionals, we should be used to it. You can't get used to something like that.”
Pollak said ParaDocs standard ratio for an event like Astroworld is one medic per thousand people.
Houston Police Chief Sam Peña believes there may have been up to 55,000 people at the concert. While the venue could handle that many people, the problem was they were all concentrated into a small space near the stage when Travis Scott began to perform.
He said at one point they logged up to 5,000 people who got into the festival illegally.