It takes a lot to faze an emergency medicine doctor, but the “smurfs” did it for Taylor Burkholder.
Blue patients, drunken falls, overheated dancers, it’s all in a day for medical workers at live events. “At some festivals the medical tent will have up to eight critical care beds with the ability to intubate people and put them on breathing machines,” says Burkholder, adding that tents also usually have huge tanks filled with ice and water for dunking people whose body temperatures get too high because of drug use or the heat.
Medical services also evolved as more concerts grew into multiday events. The big change came with Lollapalooza, an annual three-day summer music festival in Chicago, which typically hosts about 400,000 concertgoers., and the city asked him to work with Lollapalooza in 2014 after officials noted “a significant number of hospital transports.”