By MATT SEDENSKY

Anticipation had been building for hours, but never more than now, as the red numerals on the countdown clock disappeared and the first synthesized notes vibrated. An image of an eagle in a fireball hovered above the stage, a neon red tunnel appeared and eight towers of flames rose to the sky. Leaping from darkness into the glow, rapper Travis Scott emerged, the instant for which tens of thousands gathered before him had waited.

In the thrill of the moment, clamoring for an idol, many pushed forward, thrusting revelers into revelers, closer and closer and closer, until it seemed every inch was swallowed. Then, fighting the compression or seeking escape, people pushed from the front to the back, and new ripples came with it.

What followed last Friday in Houston is clouded by unanswered questions and strikingly different experiences based on where someone stood, which swells of movement reached them, and how they handled the crush. But in the 70 minutes the headliner was on stage in a show that left nine dead, one thing was certain: Nearly everyone felt the waves of humanity, borne of excitement but soaked with risk, as they spread.

“You became an organism,” said 26-year-old Steven Gutierrez of Ellenville, New York, who is 6-foot-2 and 391 pounds but nonetheless found himself struck by the power of the pushes that sent him drifting from his spot. “We’re all one. You’re moving with the crowd. The crowd’s like water. It’s like an ocean.”

The enthusiasm of some 50,000 spectators at the sold-out Astroworld festival was evident from the time gates opened seven hours earlier, when some of the earliest arrivals rushed through entrances with such force that metal detectors were toppled as security guards and police on horseback struggled to keep up. Though the concert grounds hosted numerous acts, Scott, a Houston-born musician who founded the festival in 2018 on the heels of his chart-topping album “Astroworld,” was undoubtedly the top draw. Some fans made a beeline for the stage built solely for the headliner, staking out positions they would hold for hours under the manufactured peaks of “Utopia Mountain.”

As afternoon turned to evening and the countdown clock appeared around 8:30 p.m., the crowd grew denser and denser, attendees said, and the first waves of motion began to ripple.

With five minutes left and latecomers pushing in, it tightened more.

In the final 30 seconds on the clock, the craggy peaks of the stage’s mountain turned to a volcano, and when the moment came, the crowd chanted: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six …”

Scott appeared. The pushes grew stronger. The first shockwaves of fear emerged.

Eligio Garcia, 18, of Corpus Christi, Texas, figures it was just 40 seconds into Scott’s set that he looked at his girlfriend with concern. They felt heat swaddle their bodies. It became hard to breathe.

Screams echoed, begging: “Please, help me!” Behind him, people were falling. It looked to him like a human whirlpool. They felt the push and his left arm slipped away from her.

In an instant, both found themselves tangled on the ground in a pile of bodies.

They managed to get up, and Garcia said they screamed to nearby production staff for help but got no response. Every way out seemed impossible, but they eventually made their way to safety.

“We gotta get out of here,” he told his girlfriend. “We can’t fall back into this pit.”

Travis Scott’s fans are dubbed “ragers” and are expected to be in constant motion at a show. The rapper, who dreamed of being a wrestler as a child and has said he wants his shows to resemble WWF matches, cheers chaos from the stage and stirs up frantic energy. He even has a gold necklace mimicking a street sign: A jewel-encrusted red circle with a person standing still, a diagonal red slash through the body.

The message is clear: No bystanders at concerts. Ragers only.

And so the show continued, Scott headbanging and shrieking, running through a quick succession of hits.

Some experienced concertgoers in the crowd grabbed whistles around their necks or shouted “Open it up!” to trigger those around them to form mosh pits, circles that were the only voids in the jam-packed horde. Moshers shoved and heaved their bodies against one another in an aggressive ritual toeing the line between dance and violence. Around mosh pits’ perimeter, circles of participants rotated and crowdsurfers took flight.

Moshers want their pits to grow as big as possible. Their outward push, combined with the rotations of participants, can create a swirl of motion that moves through the crowd. It was nothing new to many at the show. But, combined with the push toward the stage, others felt the crowd compress in ways they hadn’t before.

Billy Nasser, 24, of Indianapolis, noticed it a few songs in. His raised arms no longer had room to come down. People were falling. Some stepped on the lifeless body of a passed-out man with his eyes rolled back in his head.

“I had to let him go .. It was every man for himself,” Nasser said. “And that was when I realized how bad it was because I literally had to drop him and no one else would help me.”

As flashpoints emerged in some places, the show went on. Lasers springing from the stage’s tunnel made it look at times like a prism capturing a blaring sun.

Some 530 Houston Police officers were on the scene and their walkie-talkies crackled with a warning: Don’t leave your group. No fewer than 10 officers together. Danger looms.

“We’re having some structural issues that could be catastrophic,” a voice cautioned.

About 22 minutes into his set, Scott seemed to see something in the crowd.

“Make sure he good,” he said. “Walk with him. Take him.”

Around the same time, over police radio, a voice advised: “Folks are coming out of the crowd complaining of difficulty breathing, crushing type injuries. It seems like the crowd is compressing.”

The mass of people continued to tighten in spots, but escape paths remained.

Kevin Perez, a 19-year-old from Davenport, Florida, saw a mosh pit collapse behind him and realized he no longer was controlling his own movement. His forearms felt bound to his chest, his hands clenched in fists near his neck. He tipped his chin toward the sky for shallow breaths.

“It went from like excited to scared,” he said. “People were trying to get out.”

Perez followed a snake of people cutting through the crowd. Others climbed barricades.

In the hindsight of their escapes, the moments of this night would take new meaning.

An opening song entitled “Escape Plan.” T-shirts brandished with “See you on the other side.” A man in the crowd holding a white sign that asked “Will we survive.”

The situation appeared to be worsening, the waves growing stronger, the opportunities to break free fewer.

“It got to the point,” said 21-year-old Jason Rodriguez of Texas City, Texas, “where nobody could move.”

About 28 minutes into Scott’s set, a golf cart with flashing blue and red lights barely inched through the sea.

“There’s an ambulance in the crowd,” the rapper said. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

He paused for about a minute. Scott told the audience to raise their hands to the sky. “You all know what you came here to do,” he said, a cue for two men who were picked from the crowd to launch into stagedives.

Scott finished “Upper Echelon” as he hit the 30-minute mark onstage. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner later said this was the point his department noticed attendees “going down.”

At the medical tent, where the capacity was just 10 people, according to permit filings, concern grew. On police radio, word was broadcast: “There’s a lot of people trampled and they’re passed out.”

On the perimeter of the concert area, people were being thrust against metal barricades. Some began to bend.

During the next song, a young woman was captured on video climbing a platform with a cameraman.

“There is someone dying!” she cried. “There is someone dead!”

A young man joined her on the camera platform, screaming: “Stop the show! Stop the show!”

The show went on.

What the rapper could see remains unknown. He soon had a new vantage atop an elevated platform at center stage and said at one point he could see “all the way in the back.” But in videos looking out at the spectators, thousands of glowing phones look like a sky of glittering stars. His attorneys said later he didn’t know about the deaths or injuries until after the show.

As Scott sang from the platform, security guards were seen responding in the crowd, saying “He’s not having a pulse” and “There’s like four people out here without a pulse.” Police say the festival’s promoter, Live Nation, agreed to cut the show short around this time. Inexplicably, though, the concert continued.

Forty minutes had passed since Scott took the stage, and again he briefly stopped.

“We need somebody help. Somebody passed out right here,” he said.

He returned to work shortly, singing lyrics that speak of “standing in the ocean.” Before him, the real-life sea of humanity bubbled with problems. Panic spread.

“I gotta get out! I gotta get out!” Ariel Little cried, her chest throbbing under the crowd’s crush.

“You’re going to get trampled!” Michael Suarez told himself, struggling not to fall.

“I’m going to die in here!” Stacey Sarmiento thought as she tried to escape.

One woman bit a man to make her way through. A man said humans turned to animals as the situation spiraled.

It felt to some as if it couldn’t get worse, but another rush was coming. Fifty-two minutes into Scott’s set, superstar rapper Drake appeared on stage, a surprise that sent the crowd again pushing.

Gutierrez, a hulking former lifeguard, had returned to the crowd after a brief retreat after guiding two people to safety. Now, he was back among them, overwhelmed by the joy of seeing Drake before him.

“You felt the rush to the stage and there was a big push,” he said. “The Drake effect.”

Scott and Drake shared the stage for 14 minutes until, alone again, Scott delivered a final song as the mountain behind him burst with color and fireworks rocketed overhead.

“Make it home safe!” he yelled before jogging offstage.

The ocean receded, baring ground littered with shoes and clothes and trash. A field hospital bloated with the injured. And, from the lips of concertgoers, word of tragedy spread.

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Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Juan Lozano, Jamie Stengle and Robert Bumsted in Houston; Ryan Pearson in Los Angeles; and David Sharp in Portland, Maine.

By SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK JORDANS

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) is “on life support” as U.N. climate talks enter their final days, but he added that “until the last moment, hope should be maintained.”

In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Guterres said the negotiations set to end Friday in Glasgow, Scotland, will “very probably” not yield the carbon-cutting pledges he has said are needed to keep the planet from warming beyond the 1.5-degree threshold.

So far, the talks have not come close to achieving any of the U.N.’s three announced priorities for the annual conference, called COP26. One is cutting carbon emissions by about half by 2030 to reach the goal Guterres alluded to.

The other two are getting rich countries to fulfill a 12-year-old pledge of providing $100 billion a year in financial climate aid to poor nations and ensuring that half of that amount goes to helping developing nations adapt to the worst effects of climate change.

Guterres said the Glasgow talks “are in a crucial moment” and need to accomplish more than securing a weak deal that participating nations agree to support.

“The worst thing would be to reach an agreement at all costs by a minimum common denominator that would not respond to the huge challenges we face,” Guterres said.

That’s because the overarching goal of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) by the end of the century “is still in reach but on life support,” Guterres said. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), leaving far less than a degree before the threshold is hit.

Less than 36 hours from the scheduled close of the negotiations, Guterres said that if negotiators can’t reach ambitious carbon-cutting goals — “and very probably it will not happen” — then national leaders would need to come up with new pledges next year and in 2023 during high-level meetings.

He said it is “very important” that nations update their goals and send top leaders to the climate talks every year, at this point. However, Guterres would not say at what point he thinks the 1.5-degree goal would have to be abandoned.

“When you are on the verge of the abyss, it’s not important to discuss what will be your fourth or fifth step,” Guterres said. “What’s important to discuss is what will be your first step. Because if your first step is the wrong step, you will not have the chance to do a search to make a second or third one.”

Guterres said he agreed with youth climate activists — who have been a daily presence protesting in large numbers outside the climate talks, and at times inside — who called for the U.N. to term global warming a “climate emergency” of a high level and treat it as such.

“For me, it is clear it is a climate emergency,” Guterres said. “I have asked all member states to declare it, and I will be making sure that we mobilize the whole of the U.N. system based on the concept of a climate emergency.”

As terrible and tragic as the COVID-19 pandemic is, there’s a way climate change is more of an emergency, Guterres said.

“The pandemic is reversible. We have the tools and the instruments to stop it,” he said. “Climate change is a global threat to the planet and to humankind. And for the moment, we have not yet all the tools and the instruments that we need to defeat it.”

And much of that comes down to money.

The lack of movement on financial aid to poorer countries troubles Guterres. He said if he were the leader of a vulnerable small island or other endangered country he would be upset with what’s not happening in Glasgow.

“When I see trillions being spent by the developed world and at the same time, the suffering, the impacts of climate change more than in the global north, in hurricanes, in droughts that undermine the development of my country and the well-being of my citizens,” Guterres said, putting himself in the shoes of an island leader. “I mean, it would be impossible in this situation not to feel an enormous frustration if the developed countries do not correspond to a number of basic commitments” on financial help.

And that rich-poor split kept cropping up Thursday.

Pushing back against the “narrative” of trying to limit warming to 1.5C put forward by rich countries, a group of developing nations said that rich countries were trying to shift the burden of combating climate change onto poorer nations.

Talks are now at the point where two pathways were possible: one that was good for people and the planet, and the other that led to “carbon colonialism,” said Bolivia’s chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco Balanz. “We need to fight the developed countries against the carbon colonialism.”

Balanz was speaking on behalf of the negotiating block of developing nations that include countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia — with China and India among the latter.

Guterres praised a Wednesday evening agreement between the United States and China to cut emissions this decade as a reason why he still hopes for some semblance of success in Glasgow. He said China indicating that it would seek to have its emissions going down before 2030 represented a key change in the top emitter’s outlook.

“I believe it will be very important that this agreement paves the way for other agreements,” Guterres said in a 25-minute AP interview.

The U.N. chief said he hoped that two sticky issues that defied resolution for six years can be solved in Glasgow: creating workable markets for trading carbon credits and transparency that shows that promised pollution-reducing actions are real.

Fresh drafts of the documents on regulating international cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the carbon markets section, were released overnight, as were new proposals containing various options for assessing and tracking financial aid for developing countries.

The chair of this year’s U.N. climate meeting called on negotiators from almost 200 countries to engage in “another gear shift” as they try to reach agreement on outstanding issues a day before the talks are scheduled to end.

British official Alok Sharma said Thursday that the drafts released overnight on a number of crunch topics “represent a significant step further toward the comprehensive, ambitious and balanced set of outcomes, which I hope parties will adopt by consensus at the end of tomorrow.”

Sharma said he was “under no illusion” that the texts being considered would wholly satisfy all countries at this stage but thanked negotiators for the “spirit of cooperation and civility” they had shown so far.

“We are not there yet,” he said, adding that he aimed to get a fresh draft of the overarching decision released early Friday.

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Associated Press writer Aniruddha Ghosal contributed from Glasgow.

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears and Frank Jordans at @wirereporter

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