A 23-year-old Taylor Swift fan died on the singer’s Eras Tour live performance in Rio de Janeiro Friday evening, in response to a press release from the present’s organizers in Brazil. Each Swifties and politicians reacted to the information with outrage.
Whereas a reason for 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 necessary.”
The petition garnered greater than 150,000 signatures in only a few hours. Federal authorities introduced that free water can be made accessible in any respect future live shows.
In a handwritten observe shared on her social media, Swift stated she had a “shattered coronary heart.”
“There’s little or no data I’ve aside from the truth that she was so extremely stunning 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 reside leisure firm stated.
Live performance-goers stated they weren’t allowed to carry 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), but it surely felt a lot hotter.
Elizabeth Morin, 26, who lately moved to Rio from Los Angeles, described “sauna-like” circumstances contained in the stadium.
“It was extraordinarily sizzling. My hair received so moist from sweat as quickly as I got here in,” she stated. “There was some extent at which I needed to verify my respiratory to verify I wasn’t going to move out.”
Morin stated she drank loads of water however noticed “a superb quantity of individuals trying 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 so much more durable to entry from different components of the stadium, “particularly in the event you have been involved about dropping your particular place.”
In the course of 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 response to 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, might 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 advised 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’ buddy, Daniele Menin, who attended the live performance along with her, advised on-line information website G1 that her buddy handed out originally of the live performance, as Swift carried out her second tune, “Merciless Summer time.”
“We all the time stated that when (Taylor Swift) got here to Brazil we might discover a option to go. The ticket was very costly, however we nonetheless discovered a manner”, Menin advised 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 exhibits scheduled in Rio, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.
“I’m not going to have the ability to talk about this from stage as a result of I really feel overwhelmed by grief once I even attempt to speak about it,” she wrote. “I need to say now I really feel this loss deeply and my damaged coronary heart goes out to her household and pals.”
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