A 23-year-old Taylor Swift fan died on the singer’s Eras Tour live performance in Rio de Janeiro Friday evening, in keeping with an announcement from the present’s organizers in Brazil. Each Swifties and politicians reacted to the information with outrage.
Whereas a reason behind dying for Ana Clara Benevides Machado has not been introduced, followers complained they weren’t allowed to take water into Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium regardless of hovering temperatures.
A gaggle launched an internet petition Saturday morning calling for a “Benevides Regulation” to “make water in occasions obligatory.”
The petition garnered greater than 150,000 signatures in just some hours. Federal authorities introduced that free water could be made obtainable in any respect future live shows.
In a handwritten notice shared on her social media, Swift stated she had a “shattered coronary heart.”
“There’s little or no info I’ve aside from the truth that she was so extremely lovely and much too younger,” the singer wrote of the younger girl.
The present’s organizer, Time4Fun, stated on Instagram that paramedics attended to Benevides after she reported feeling unwell. She was taken to a first-aid middle after which to a hospital, the place she died an hour later, the assertion from the Brazilian stay leisure firm stated.
Live performance-goers stated they weren’t allowed to convey water bottles into the stadium though Rio and most of Brazil have had record-breaking temperatures this week amid a harmful and lasting warmth wave. The daytime excessive in Rio on Friday was 39.1 levels Celsius (102.4 levels Fahrenheit), nevertheless it felt a lot hotter.
Elizabeth Morin, 26, who not too long ago moved to Rio from Los Angeles, described “sauna-like” situations contained in the stadium.
“It was extraordinarily scorching. My hair bought so moist from sweat as quickly as I got here in,” she stated. “There was a degree at which I needed to examine my respiratory to ensure I wasn’t going to move out.”
Morin stated she drank loads of water however noticed “an excellent quantity of individuals wanting distressed” and others “yelling for water.” She stated she was capable of get water from the sidelines of the realm she was standing in, however that water was loads tougher to entry from different components of the stadium, “particularly in case you have been involved about shedding your particular place.”
Throughout the present, Swift paused her efficiency and requested from the stage for water to be delivered to a bunch of people that had efficiently caught the singer’s consideration, in keeping with Morin.
“They have been holding up their telephones saying `We want water,”’ she recalled.
Justice Minister Flavio Dino stated on X that the ministry would implement “emergency guidelines” in response to the scenario. He later introduced that “water bottles for private use, in appropriate materials, will probably be allowed” at live shows and different occasions and that present producers should present free and simply accessible consuming water.
Earlier than the present, Benevides posted a video of herself on Instgram carrying a Taylor Swift T-shirt and ready in line to enter the stadium whereas searching for shade beneath an umbrella. Like her, hundreds of followers waited hours within the solar earlier than being allowed inside.
She informed her followers whereas fanning her face that she’d arrived at 11 a.m. — the present started round 7:30 p.m. — and was “nonetheless within the mess.”
Benevides’ good friend, Daniele Menin, who attended the live performance together with her, informed on-line information web site G1 that her good friend handed out firstly of the live performance, as Swift carried out her second music, “Merciless Summer time.”
“We at all times stated that when (Taylor Swift) got here to Brazil we’d discover a strategy to go. The ticket was very costly, however we nonetheless discovered a manner”, Menin informed G1.
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes stated on X the “lack of a younger girl’s life … is unacceptable.”
Whereas authorities are investigating the circumstances of the dying, Paes wrote, the municipality will demand Saturday that the present’s manufacturing firm present new water distribution factors, extra brigades and ambulances, and advance entrance to the present by one hour.
Swift has two extra reveals scheduled in Rio, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.
“I’m not going to have the ability to discuss this from stage as a result of I really feel overwhelmed by grief once I even attempt to discuss it,” she wrote. “I wish to say now I really feel this loss deeply and my damaged coronary heart goes out to her household and buddies.”
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