One fan died and several others fainted at a Taylor Swift concert Friday in Rio de Janeiro, where the temperature was nearly 140 degrees, a record for the city, and fans said they had difficulty getting water.
Ana Clara Benevides, 23, lost consciousness during the concert and was later pronounced dead of cardiac arrest after being taken to hospital, according to city authorities and the Brazilian company organizing the show, Time For Fun.
There were widespread complaints about extreme heat and lack of water from fans inside the open-air soccer stadium, where Ms. Swift performed for more than 60,000 people in the first of three sold-out shows in Rio this weekend as part of the South American leg of his record-breaking Eras Tour.
Ms. Swift’s fans said on social media that they were prohibited from bringing water into the stadium, while other fans said vendors struggled to reach people near the stage. The videos showed Ms Swift throwing a water bottle at a fan and ordering stadium staff to bring water to other fans while people in the audience chanted for water.
The tragedy brought together two of the year’s major storylines: rising temperatures and hysteria over Ms. Swift’s global tour.
In Argentina, where Ms. Swift performed last week, some fans camped out for more than five months to try to get a seat closer to the stage. In Brazil, a day after Ms. Benevides’ death, fans were queuing for Ms. Swift’s next scheduled concert on Saturday, when forecasts showed she could get even hotter.
In an online post, Ms Swift said she was “devastated” by her fan’s death. “I won’t be able to talk about this from the stage because I feel overwhelmed with resentment even when I try to talk about it,” she said.
Wadih Damous, the head of Brazil’s consumer protection agency, said his agency had ordered the concert organizers, Time For Fun, to provide free water at various locations during Ms. Swift’s performances on Saturday and Sunday.
“The decision to prevent thousands of people from drinking water with a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius is crazy and irresponsible,” Damous said. He said the government will investigate Time For Fun.
The company said Saturday it will add staff to the concert, provide free water and allow fans to come in with water and food.
Parts of Brazil have been hit by a stifling heatwave this week, with temperatures breaking records and the National Meteorological Institute issuing safety warnings to 15 states. In Rio, temperatures on Friday topped 106 degrees, or 41 degrees Celsius. The heat index, a measure of how hot the air is due to humidity, reaches 139 degrees, a record for the city.
It seems almost certain that 2023 will be Earth’s hottest year on record, with global temperatures reaching record levels in each of the past five months, from June to October. Scientists said the year’s record heat was caused by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mostly from the burning of oil, gas and coal, as well as the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern.
Brazilian government institutions have said that El Niño has changed the region’s weather patterns since June, raising temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near South America by three degrees Celsius, bringing more rain to the south and drought to the north.
Felipe Galvão, 28, a systems analyst, was on the field near the stage on Friday when people started getting sick from the heat even before the concert began. By the time the show began, so many people had gotten sick and left their seats that he made it to the railing along the stage.
“I’ve been going to concerts since 2011, but I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “There were very few staff and unfortunately they couldn’t do much for the fans. You could see that they too were a little lost.”
Fabíola Gerbase, journalist and designer, said that she already didn’t like concerts in stadiums because of the crowds and the high prices, so she was even more disgusted when she read the news of the death of the fan and the difficulties that the spectators had to get water.
But Ms. Gerbase said she still planned to attend Saturday’s show despite the warmth, because her 11-year-old daughter is “counting the minutes to see her on stage.”
Paolo Motoryn contributed reporting from Brasilia.
