No Rock And Roll Fun

LIFES A BEACH AND THEN YOU...: Hmmm, the estimates of the number of people who tried to get onto Brighton Beach at the weekend for Norman Q. Cook's big beat bash seem to be rising faster than Worldcom's profits, and are just as reliable - now they're claiming a quarter of a million, which is the sort of number the Pope gets for a Sunday afternoon in downtown Manilla. However, it does seem that Fatboy's put the kibosh on any future events of a fun nature in Sussex, according to this from the the (no longer Evening) Argus
After one of Britain's biggest-ever free concerts brought Brighton and Hove to the brink of disaster, emergency services united in saying: "Never again".
DJ Fatboy Slim's party on the beach attracted more than a quarter of a million people, four times more than expected, to the seafront.
Tens of thousands crammed between Brighton's two piers, jamming roads, bringing the city's public transport system to meltdown and overwhelming emergency services.
As the city woke up to a collective hangover on Sunday, and an army of cleaners began clearing more than 100 tonnes of rubbish, a sober post-mortem was being carried out by police and council bosses who accepted the concert had spiralled out of control.
Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, who spent £100,000 of his own money to stage the concert, has offered to pay even more to ensure the clean-up is completed by lunchtime today.
The scale of the event was misjudged by organisers who predicted 60,000 fans would turn up.
But a constant stream of revellers flowed into the city from early Saturday morning from all over Britain, lured to the coast by glorious sunshine.
By noon, ten-mile tailbacks stretched up the A23 towards London.
By 3pm police realised they had a major incident on their hands. Extra officers were drafted in from all over the county to cope with the gathering crowds.
When Fatboy Slim took to the stage at 9pm an unbroken sea of faces stretched from the West Pier to the Palace Pier.
The route from Brighton station to the seafront was in human gridlock. Some 25,000 people spent the evening stuck on the mile-long route to the beach.
Almost 100 people were treated for crush injuries.
One 40-year-old man died of a heart attack. A 26-year old woman was today still fighting for life after falling from the upper esplanade on to the beach. Police were trying to contact her family this morning.
Scores of people had to be plucked from the sea.
Casualties were ferried out of the crowd by lifeboat, the only escape route.
The music was switched off for several minutes as security guards coaxed down one man dangling dangerously from the top of a street lamp.
Reveller Emily Hobbs, 31, from Croydon, south London, said: "It was utter lunacy.
"We couldn't get close enough to hear, let alone see anything. People were hanging out of buildings and standing on top of cars just to try to get a look.
"You could sense something was wrong. There were just too many people.
"Ambulances were trying to get through the crowds and people were hanging off the back just to get away from the crowds.
"At the end we could not get home and all the hotels were full so we had to sleep under the pier."
Stephen Vaughan, 23, said: "We were quite near the front and from a very early stage it was absolutely crammed.
"More and more people kept coming and coming and a few people were growing concerned about crushing. It could have been another Hillsborough."
A worried-looking Norman played a restrained 90-minute set which ended with a blizzard of fake snow swirling down on the crowd.
Then the chaos really began.
Buses and trains were unable to cope. Brighton station was closed intermittently as crowds on the platform were squeezed on to the tracks.
Four extra trains were laid on and extra buses were brought in to ferry people to stations further up the line but hundreds of people still spent the night stranded in the city.
John Palfrey, 43, from Worthing, tried to catch a train home at 10.30pm at Brighton station but was forced to walk to Hove.
He said: "I came across the most fearsome number of people outside although they were all very well-behaved.
"I did manage to get on to the platform but the train was rammed and there was no way I was ever going to get on it.
"I thought at the time it was going to be another Hillsborough as people were so close to being pushed on to the tracks.
"I've never gone to a public event and seen such abysmal organisation."
Staff at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton treated 100 people.
Hospital spokesman Ian Keeber said: "It was an absolute nightmare. Staff were working flat out. Many carried on after their shift while others came in to help.
"We were a hair's breadth away from declaring a major incident.
"As far as we are concerned we don't want this event happening again.
"We had patients with various problems including crush injuries, lacerations and twisted ankles.
"There may have been no problems with violence but as far as we were concerned it was a very difficult night.
"It was completely unexpected. Hardly anybody had come to see us for treatment last year and we had no idea this was going to happen.
"We knew it was probably going to be a bit busier than normal but we really did not think it would be on this scale."
Taxi driver Brian Ralfe said: "It was absolute chaos around the station and throughout Brighton and Hove. Everywhere was gridlocked.
"I took some people from the Bear Road and Lewes Road area down to St Peter's Church.
"It took them about an hour and a quarter and cost them £22 but they were happy to pay it because they didn't want to get out of the cab."
Despite the enormous scale of the event, police made only six arrests and said the clubbers were generally in good spirits.
The arrests were mainly for assaults and drunkenness.
And the concert provided a much-needed shot in the arm for the city's economy, hit by the miserable weather through June and July.
Hotels were all booked and pubs, off-licences, restaurants and shops were doing a roaring trade throughout the weekend.
Council leader Ken Bodfish said he thought the event had been a success. He said: "There were many more people than expected. The fact there was such unexpected good weather also helped to attract many others.
"I think the event has probably got as a big as it could possibly be and we will need to look at that in the future.
"We always have a post-mortem with the police and other emergency services after events like this and we will be doing it again this time. All the preparations were put in place based on information from last year's event. There were many more people than we expected but they were on the whole well-behaved."
Roger French, managing director of Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company, apologised to people who were kept waiting before they could get home.
Mr French, who watched the concert live on TV, said: "While an event like this shows the undoubted popularity of Brighton and Hove the city simply doesn't have the infrastructure to cope."
A spokesman for rail company Thameslink said: "We were completely overwhelmed. We had catered for between 50,000 and 60,000 people.
"It was so crowded people were almost on the track.
"We had to lay on buses because we had an order by Railtrack who were doing engineering works so we were bussing people out to Haywards Heath and letting them catch trains from there.
"There is a debrief meeting today and clearly the point we will be making to the council is our services cannot cope with that number."
A Solent Coastguard spokesman said about 20 people were taken to the marina, two miles east of the Palace Pier, where an ambulance was stationed.
At least six people were spotted in difficulties in the water and had to be rescued.
Steve Tilling, a senior control centre manager for Sussex Ambulance Service, said: "With hindsight, it would be easy to say it should never have happened.
"But we are lucky to have places for such events and I think generally they should go ahead. But I think we need to look at limiting numbers."
A council spokesman said: "It was an exceptional night, much bigger than anticipated and there were undoubtedly a number of headaches.
"There have been some problems. We will examine whether a similar event could ever happen again."
But a statement released by the organisers said: "Although the numbers were huge, the emergency services and local authority across the city responded superbly to this extraordinary event.
"Big Beach Boutique was a party that took place in very good spirits with no more arrests than any other Saturday night.
"Saturdays in Brighton can often attract 100,000 under normal conditions and the city is well placed to deal with events of this kind.
"The contingency plan to clean up the beach and the streets is swinging into action. Norman Cook is spending extra funds on the clean-up and it will be completed by Monday afternoon.
"Within ten hours of the end, 60 tonnes of rubbish had been cleansed and it proceeds in earnest."
Norman Cook said: "This was without doubt the biggest gig of my career.
"I would like to thank the emergency services on the night and everyone involved in the clean-up operation."
A police spokesman said today: "It was a difficult evening. The resources of the emergency services were stretched and Brighton was packed.
"There were particular problems, especially at the station, in getting people away from Brighton and many slept on the beach or in parks overnight.
"Extra officers were brought in from across Sussex to assist the safety operation, and some Met officers also provided further support.
"There is routinely a meeting of the agencies involved after such events. We will be meeting with our partner agencies, including the event organisers, the city council and the train operators, to see what lessons can be learned from what happened."
Of course, delightful to see the phrase 'another Hillsborough' bandied about - it seems to be a strange Brightonian reaction to wail "It's another Hillsborough" as soon as three people get together in public. Putting in an eyeglass, you have to ask: where exactly is the horror here? One hundred people in Accident & Emergency enough to start to declare a major emergency? Jesus, Gordon had better get that extra money to the NHS right away. And in all this confusion, this mass of bodies, there were six arrests, one accident, and a heart attack. In that respect, how far different from a normal summer saturday in the city would this be? Clearly, what's happened here is that systems were stretched, but worked incredibly well - apart from the fuckwits at Railtrack blithely forgetting to check what was happening in Brighton before cancelling trains, of course. A large number of people went to the seaside, had fun, a spot of overcrowding, and then went home. If this is how Brighton reacts to a busy night out, what will the place do if ever something nasty happens in the town?