East London's Bloc Festival has been forced to prematurely close down
after just one night with Friday evening's festivities turning ugly with
promoters forced to pull the plug.Queuing chaos and safety concerns left organisers no choice as police were called.
We understand there were more people at the event than had tickets with reports of over a 1000 punters being turned away despite having tickets.
Event organisers have confirmed that Bloc.2012 will not re-open as expected but have promised ticket holders refunds. The official statement is below.
"By now everyone will have heard that Bloc 2012 was closed due to crowd safety concerns," says an official statement. "We are all absolutely devastated that this happened, but the safety of everyone on site was paramount. Given the situation on the ground, we feel that it was the right decision to end the show early.
"Bloc will not open on Saturday 7th July so please don't come to the site. Stand by for full information on refunds."
Snoop Dogg and Orbital were due to headline the festival at London's Pleasure Garden in East London.
Garfield Hackett and Debs Armstrong, co-directors of LPG, said: 'We are hugely disappointed that Bloc Festival had to close early last night and has been cancelled today. We are fully investigating what happened and will provide further information when we are in a position to do so. We thank our staff for dealing with the issue in a manner which ensured that the site was cleared safely.'
All ticket refund requests should be addressed directly to Bloc www.blocweekend.com
Twitter and facebook was rife with comments such as:
"Bloc is um a disaster right now. We're in the middle of a car crash," tweeted a festival goer.
"dear bloc, i call you out as frauds. i like how you have hidden behind the skirt of public safety when you should be apologising for pretending to be able to organise a festival without the implicit facilities of a summer camp venue, when you clearly cannot" anther wrote on the official Bloc facebook page.
"Scary, and very nearly led to injuries; all we were told was 'move back' ' where to exactly?"
"Bloc 2012 Bloc. was shit, want my money back. Only people i got into see were doom and amon tobin after 2 hour queue. couldnt hear a thing at doom might as well have had no mic. All arenas not letting anyone in by 11pm.. Bout 8000 people too many. Shit buzz . Worst festival ever!!!"