HOUSTON — A Houston ICU nurse shared her terrifying story from Friday night's Astroworld Fest on social media. Madeline Eskins says she jumped into action to help because security guards were overwhelmed when people started passing out.
Eskins took a day off from work to go to the concert, but the medical worker and her boyfriend ran into trouble. She says they were near the front of the stage as Travis Scott was performing and the crowd began surging.
The 23-year-old says it felt like she was “drowning in people.” She says she was so crammed in that she literally could not raise her arms. She was feeling pressure from every direction.
“I’ve seen people die. Nothing could have prepared me for what I witnessed last night,” Eskins, 23, told The Daily Beast. “I was about to tell my boyfriend to tell my son that I loved him, because I really thought that I was not gonna see him again. And before I could say anything, I fainted.”
At one point, she says she passed out, so her boyfriend and a security guard carried her out of the crowd.
When she came to consciousness, Madeline says she was among several other people who were in medical trouble.
“I noticed that one guy they were carrying looked real bad,” she said. “And I stopped him and I said, ‘Hey, have you checked the pulse?' And the security guard was like, ‘I don’t know how.’ And I said, ‘I’m an ICU nurse. Let me help.' He said, ‘Please check the pulse.’ And he didn’t have a pulse. I said, ‘Don’t put him down to go get someone else. You need to take him straight to a medical tent.’ And then another security guard overheard me say that I was an ICU nurse. I said, ‘What can I do to help?’ He said, ‘Please, we need help over here.'"
Madeline says she triaged people for several minutes and stayed in the parking lot until every person she helped was taken to a hospital by ambulance.
She and her boyfriend are physically OK today.
But so many people, especially those whose posts have gone viral on social media, are telling us that they’re still in shock, too exhausted to begin processing last night’s traumatic experience.