Remember #fyrefestival The music festival that was supposed to be held on a private island that would eventually turn into a global disaster leaving concert goers without food, lodging or any clue as to what the hell was going on.
Organizers have held onto to the story that they didn’t know how un-prepared they were until late. Leaked emails from organizers show that they were actually on edge about the whole show days prior to anyone coming to the island.
Per MIC
More than three weeks before Fyre Festival’s epic collapse in the last weekend of April, Fyre executives were rapidly facing the logistical nightmare of getting ready for their wildly hyped festival.
In an urgent April 3 email with the subject line, “RED FLAG- BATHROOMS/ SHOWER SHIPPING,” a mid-level Fyre Festival worker alerted senior staff, including 25-year-old co-founder Billy McFarland and Fyre Media president Conall Arora, of a growing crisis: the unexpectedly high costs (estimated to be at least $400,000) of shipping enough toilets and showers to the Bahamas to accommodate an anticipated 2,500 people on the island.
This followed the news that its caterer, Starr Catering Group, had just pulled out of the festival. Those two events prompted one assistant on the email thread to joke, “No one is eating so therefore no ones pooping.”
That email is one of several thousand, provided to Mic by a source close to the matter, that were exchanged between festival organizers before and after the festival was shut down. Their accuracy was confirmed by three former festival staffers who were on the email exchanges. All requested anonymity for fear of legal retaliation; Fyre Media is the subject of several lawsuits alleging fraud or breach of contract, along with a federal investigation.
Neither McFarland nor Arora responded to Mic’s text and voicemail requests to both for comment. On the same day Mic reached out for comment, Fyre Festival’s official website stopped working. All other people quoted from the emails either declined or did not respond to Mic’s request for comment.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read the rest of the emails from the organizers of the event here.