News

First Responders: `Less Mayhem This Year` During Texas ACL Fest Weekends

Katie Urbaszewski

10/14/2015

Oct. 13--For first responders like Wes Hopkins, whose job is tackling any emergency that comes his way at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, he said he thought "there was less mayhem this year."

Hopkins, the special events commander for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, said no serious injuries were reported. The most urgent ACL calls EMS responded to involved too much sun or high allergy counts.

"We had a few patrons that -- because of the dust allergy counts being high -- had some difficulty breathing," Hopkins said. As temperatures rose, EMS also got more heat-related calls during the second weekend of ACL Fest than the first.

Hopkins estimated that C3 Presents, the organization behind ACL, will have to reimburse Austin-Travis County EMS $35,475 for medics' work during the festival.

City officials also estimated C3 would have to reimburse APD $394,321 and AFD $41,990 for those organizations' work during ACL, said Alicia Dean, city spokeswoman.

EMS calls have not been tallied yet, but the available police and fire data seem to show that this year's mayhem was about on par with last year.

The Austin Fire Department's downtown station also received about the same number of calls last year compared to this year. Department officials could not say which calls were ACL Fest-related, but the station responded to 33 calls last weekend, compared to 41 calls last year.

In downtown, Austin police responded to about the same number of calls during the second weekend of ACL this year as officers did last year, according to the department. Friday through Sunday, police were called to about 15 public intoxications, eight assaults that involved injury and two fights downtown. During the second ACL weekend last year, police responded to 15 public intoxications, six assaults and two fights downtown.

While police officers were on patrol during the busy ACL weekends, they also responded to a vague message posted on the mobile app Yik Yak that appeared to authorities to be a threat.

Before the man suspected of posting the message was arrested, police increased the number of officers assigned to every call as a precaution, according to the man's arrest affidavit.

"On top of all this, the threat was posted during the first weekend of ACL Festival, which is always a busy time for officers with the increase of crowds," the affidavit said. "Now, additional safety precautions were having to be factored in because of the threat."

Meanwhile, the police chief in Rollingwood raved about the decision by his city's council members to make the city streets permit parking only this year.

"We got a lot of compliments from residents who said we finally got our neighborhood back," Chief Dayne Pryor said.

For years, the small city adjacent to Zilker Park has struggled to find solutions to the huge influx of people who descend on their area every ACL Fest, and the silver bullet appears to be only allowing cars to drop people off in Rollingwood, Pryor said.

"That way, when everyone's leaving, they're not walking through the city looking for their car," Pryor said. "They're not walking through people's yards."

Over the two weekends, Rollingwood did not have any reports of theft, auto vandalism or auto burglaries, which is a first for the city during ACL, Pryor said. His officers also did not arrest or cite anyone.