Taylor Swift postpones Rio concert at last minute due to ‘extreme temperatures’

A fan died while waiting for the start of a Taylor Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, due to heatwave. The singer announces that she is postponing her concert this evening “for the good of her fans”.

Taylor Swift will not perform in Rio de Janeiro this Saturday, November 18. The singer decided to postpone her concert due to the heatwave in Brazil.

“The decision has been made to postpone tonight’s show due to the extreme temperatures in Rio. The well-being and safety of my fans, artists and staff is and always will be a priority,” the star wrote before the start of the performance.

A little earlier in the day, she took to the same social network to mourn the death of a 23-year-old fan during her concert on Friday:

“It is with a broken heart that I say we lost a fan earlier this evening,” Taylor Swift wrote on her Instagram account. “I can’t even tell you how devastated I am.”

“I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it.” “I feel this loss deep within me, and my broken heart goes out to his family and friends,” she added.

Videos posted on social media show how the star tried to help her thirsty fans, sending assistants to hand out bottles of water and even throwing them into the audience herself.

A dead fan

Rio health authorities announced that Ana Benevides died Friday evening after a cardiopulmonary arrest in the Nilton Santos stadium during the concert attended by 60,000 spectators, the first in a series of six shows that the star was to give in Brazil .

Efforts to resuscitate her failed and an investigation was launched, she said, adding that “for the moment, the causes of death cannot be determined.”

Brazil’s Justice Minister on Saturday demanded that all event organizers guarantee visitors’ access to drinking water.

“It is unacceptable that people suffer, faint and even die because they do not have access to water,” declared the Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino, wishing to clarify that the cause of this death had yet to be formally established.

Time For Fun, producer of the event, specified in a press release that the young woman had been “quickly taken care of” and that the medical team had “chosen to transfer her to the Salgado Filho hospital after almost a emergency care hour”.

Up to 59°C

Much of central and southeastern Brazil has been suffering for several days from stifling temperatures far from normal for an austral spring, with a felt temperature climbing to 59.3°C in Rio on Friday, a record since the start of records in 2014, according to the Alerta Rio system.

On Saturday before the concert’s postponement was announced, fans already queuing to enter the stadium protected themselves from the sun with umbrellas while firefighters threw water on the crowd.

Yasmin Monteiro, 24, castigated the organization of the day before. “It’s absurd. What happened is a crime for lack of organization. We’re not depriving anyone of water.”