The Twin Peaks stage at Outside Lands (in Hellman Hollow aka Speedway Meadow) was a major safety hazard and a serious accident waiting to happen.  You can’t see it well in this picture, but there were well over 10K fans forward of us here at the Kendrick Lamar show Saturday night, and NO exits of any kind for at least 500 feet the other way – and what exits did exist were narrow, steep, and (in one case) stairs only.

If there had been a fire, a fight, or any other disturbance, a crowd stampede could easily have happened and nobody forward of the concessions would have had anywhere to go!  This has happened many times in recent history – notably at the Love Parade and of course Hillsborough, where the presence of fences around the pitch contributed to the death toll.

I’m sure Outside Lands fenced off the whole area to prevent gate crashers and keep the neighbors happy, but I am very surprised that the fire marshal approved the total lack of emergency exits.  This exact location hosts a similar number of people for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass without difficulty – but it’s not fenced off.

I do intend to alert the fire marshal about this ahead of next year’s event.  Marked emergency exits are not so difficult to set up.