Avenue distributors promote bottled water to Taylor Swift followers amid a warmth wave earlier than her Eras Tour live performance exterior the Nilton Santos Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
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Silvia Izquierdo/AP
Avenue distributors promote bottled water to Taylor Swift followers amid a warmth wave earlier than her Eras Tour live performance exterior the Nilton Santos Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
RIO DE JANEIRO — Taylor Swift postponed an Eras Tour live performance in Rio de Janeiro Saturday after a 23-year-old fan died throughout her Friday evening present, in response to a message posted on the singer’s Instagram.
”I am penning this from my dressing room within the stadium. The choice has been made to postpone tonight’s present as a result of excessive temperatures in Rio,” the singer stated in a handwritten be aware on Instagram. ”The protection and nicely being of my followers, fellow performers, and crew has to and all the time will come first.”
The reason for demise for Ana Clara Benevides Machado, the younger lady who sought medical consideration at Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium throughout Friday’s present, has not but been introduced. The workplace of Rio’s public prosecutor opened a prison investigation and stated Benevides’ physique was being examined.
Benevides’ demise shook many individuals in Brazil. She had taken her first flight ever to journey from the nation’s center-west area to Rio to see her favourite musician. She additionally created a WhatsApp group to maintain her household up to date, sending pictures and movies each step of the best way, relations advised on-line information web site G1.
Followers and politicians reacted to her demise with outrage, speculating it was linked to excessive warmth.
Concertgoers complained they weren’t allowed to take water into the stadium regardless of the stifling climate. As temperatures continued to rise Saturday and with two extra reveals to go on the time, federal authorities introduced that free water would now be made obtainable at concert events and different giant occasions.
One in all Benevides’ mates, who additionally went to the live performance, advised native shops they’d each been given water whereas ready to enter the stadium.
In a earlier assertion shared on her social media Saturday morning, Swift stated she had a ”shattered coronary heart.”
”There’s little or no data I’ve aside from the truth that she was so extremely stunning and much too younger,” the singer wrote of the younger lady.
The present’s organizer, Time4Fun, stated on Instagram that paramedics attended to Benevides after she reported feeling unwell. She was taken to a first-aid heart after which to a hospital, the place she died an hour later, the assertion from the Brazilian dwell leisure firm stated.
Taylor Swift followers watch for the doorways of Nilton Santos Olympic stadium to open for her Eras Tour live performance amid a warmth wave in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
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Silvia Izquierdo/AP
Taylor Swift followers watch for the doorways of Nilton Santos Olympic stadium to open for her Eras Tour live performance amid a warmth wave in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
Followers who attended the Friday present stated they weren’t allowed to deliver water bottles into the stadium though Rio and most of Brazil have had record-breaking temperatures this week amid a harmful and lasting warmth wave. The daytime excessive in Rio on Friday was 39.1 levels Celsius (102.4 levels Fahrenheit), but it surely felt a lot hotter.
Obvious temperature — a mix of temperature and humidity — hit 59 C (138 F) Friday morning in Rio, the very best index ever recorded there.
Elizabeth Morin, 26, who lately moved to Rio from Los Angeles, described ”sauna-like” circumstances contained in the stadium.
”It was extraordinarily sizzling. My hair acquired so moist from sweat as quickly as I got here in,” she stated. ”There was a degree at which I needed to test my respiration to ensure I wasn’t going to go out.”
Morin stated she drank loads of water however noticed ”an excellent quantity of individuals wanting distressed” and others ”yelling for water.” She stated she was in a position to get water from the sidelines of the realm she was standing in, however that water was lots tougher to entry from different elements of the stadium, ”particularly in the event you had been involved about shedding your particular place.”
In the course of the present, Swift paused her efficiency and requested from the stage for water to be dropped at a gaggle of people that had efficiently caught the singer’s consideration, in response to Morin.
”They had been holding up their telephones saying ’We’d like water,'” she recalled.
Two different concertgoers interviewed by The Related Press stated they witnessed folks feeling unwell from the warmth throughout the present.
On her strategy to Rio, Benevides despatched a video to relations that was broadcast by TV channel Globo Information, telling them: ”Mother, take a look at the airplane, it is transferring. Mother, I am on the airplane. My God in heaven! I am joyful!”
Then earlier than the live performance, she posted a video of herself on Instagram sporting a Taylor Swift T-shirt and friendship bracelets, searching for shade below an umbrella whereas ready in line to enter the stadium.
Like her, hundreds of followers waited hours within the solar earlier than being allowed inside.
She advised her followers whereas fanning her face that she’d arrived at 11 a.m. — the present started round 7:30 p.m. — and was ”nonetheless within the mess.”
Benevides’ pal, Daniele Menin, who attended the live performance together with her, advised on-line information web site G1 that her pal handed out initially of the live performance, as Swift carried out her second tune, ”Merciless Summer time.”
”We all the time stated that when (Taylor Swift) got here to Brazil we’d discover a strategy to go. The ticket was very costly, however we nonetheless discovered a approach,” Menin advised G1.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino stated on X, previously often called Twitter, that going ahead in Brazil, ”water bottles for private use, in appropriate materials, can be allowed” at concert events and festivals and that present producers should present free and simply accessible consuming water.
Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes wrote on X that the ”lack of a younger lady’s life … is unacceptable” and demanded extra brigades and ambulances at future reveals.
Nonetheless, the live performance was postponed.
”We’re on the prepare. And everyone seems to be so dissatisfied,” stated Hely Olivares, a 41 year-old Venezuelan who had traveled from Panama to see the artist.
Earlier than suspending the live performance, Swift wrote on Instagram that she wouldn’t handle the demise from stage ”as a result of I really feel overwhelmed by grief once I even attempt to discuss it.”
”I need to say now I really feel this loss deeply and my damaged coronary heart goes out to her household and mates,” she stated.