A work colleagues son was caught up in the aftermath of the fire (as the car him and his friends had travelled in was destroyed) – thankfully he was unharmed; and all credit to Hants Fire and Rescue for preventing the blaze spreading to a level where it endangered lives. It is understandable the Boomtown organisers are not continuing with the winter event; the stress of dealing with this must be enormous and the insurance costs are likely to rise as a result.
The currently available info about this years death hints that it it is unlikely to be drug-related and is more likely to be the result of the young woman having a pre-existing serious medical condition (there are quite a few that cause otherwise healthy, non drug using young adults to suddenly keel over, especially during sports or recreation).
I am not a doctor so can’t explain properly what these are but suggest that young adults do try and see their GP every so often for checkups (especially if they are leaving the family home and moving in to shared accomodation or University halls) – there is similar advice elsewhere from NHS England following outbreaks of measles across festivals in England.
I have my own personal concerns over multiple safety risks to young participants inadvertantly triggered by the current trend towards multi-day festivals as opposed to traditional raves and EDM events (although these are IMO more linked to road safety issues cased by the abysmal transport infrastructure of the UK than concerns over drug use).
The incident count might seem excessive (although crimes and other incidents were down in comparison to previous years) but if the UK authorities insist on balkanising music events into obscure bits of the country WTF do they expect? UK youth are still fairly affluent and have easy access to cars, they are not simply going to give up if their local rave events (both licensed and otherwise) are constantly locked off..
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/aug/19/boomtown-cancels-winter-gathering-following-festival-death
