The safety of New York City’s largest electronic music festival is in the hands of two brothers from Flushing.
After two people died in drug-related events at last year’s Electric Zoo festival on Randall’s Island, the organizers are stepping up safety measures for this year’s festival on Labor Day weekend, according to the brothers Chaim and Alex Pollak.
Alex founded Paradocs three years ago and the company provides medical stand-bys for all kinds of events. This year they had medical tents at Governor’s Ball and a music show featuring Drake.
“They want to keep this festival in New York City,” Chaim said. “So they’re implementing new safety measures to prevent anything bad from happening this year and to keep the festival here.”
Alex and Chaim run Paradocs, a 3-year-old company that specializes in managing safety measures for large events like the Electric Zoo festival. Last year was their first time running the three-day electronic music event and on the first day of the show, Olivia Rotondo, 20, died, according to reports last year. The festivities continued and on the second day Jeffrey Russ, 23, died. Both of the revelers died from overdoses of MDMA or Molly. The organizers decided to stop the festival and not have a third day of music.
“When you have 80,000 people crammed into one place, things get complicated,”Chaim said.
Alex and Chaim hope to prevent deaths this year by using “Zoo Keepers,” among other initiatives.
These keepers are made up of younger people who will walk through the dance floors of the festival, looking for signs of dehydration and drug-induced distress.
The duo also plans on having about six safety tents with medical personnel and LED signs to clearly mark the safety areas.
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