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Glastonbury Festival Hit by Floods

Ask the crusty, aging hippies who attended Woodstock if you must, but it's painfully obvious by now: The weather gods effin' hate rock festivals. Despite hosting multiple stages and nearly every artist you care about, the opening day of Glastonbury Festival was a near disaster, after a torrential thunderstorm hit the Somerset, England site Friday, leaving nearly 400 tents submerged in mud and water. Several audience members literally swam back to their tents to rescue their belongings.

Festival management delayed performances on the main stages as technicians carried out a major clean up operation-- nearly two inches of rainfall covered the 1,000-acre site in all. Luckily for those throngs of Coldplay fans, the rest of the show went on as scheduled and there were no reports of damage to festival facilities or major injuries, although an ambulance spokesperson told icWales.com that 19 patients had received attention of some kind Friday, some for drug-related incidents and other minor scrapes and bruises. Fire services pumped nearly 800,000 gallons of water from the area on Saturday and Sunday, leaving it littered with debris and burned copies of Silent Alarm.

Festival boss Michael Eavis, despite calling the flood "a bit of a nightmare," said the festival had been "pretty damned good, really." He added that if you think about it, rain is better than "boring, continuous sun." We agree, but then, we've never had to use an oar to get closer to the stage at an M83 show.

Glastonbury Festival: <a

Posted by Matt Amis in on Mon: 06-27-05: 12:00 AM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink
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