Editor’s note: Both Emilee Klein and Sean Dunham are editors at the Amherst Wire.

On April 2, the floor of a house on Meadow st. Amherst, caved in. The cause of this was that too many people packed into the living room of the house to see some bands play.

Rust Bucket, Track Meat, and the Lights were all set to play starting at 10 p.m.

Emilee Klein, a Junior Journalism major, was at the house concert when it started. She was with her friend, who’s boyfriend is in Rust Bucket, and she explains that the house was extremely crowded.

“We [Klein and her friend] got there at 10.  We squeezed into the front and then it was packed. Normally I could do a 360 spin at least, but I couldn’t do that. My butt was in someone’s crotch, someone else’s butt was in my crotch, there was no room to move,” she said.

Local band Rust Bucket was reportedly the first to start and only got through around 25-30 minutes of their set when the floor caved in.

No one was injured according to a source that would like to stay anonymous. He said, “People were startled and tripped. I didn’t even see anyone fall. It wasn’t like it dropped a lot, it only dropped a couple inches. No more than four inches.”

Klein goes on to explain when the floor caved in.

“More people come in as the show goes on. 10:15 more people. 10:20 more people. But the band is doing well so I just ignore it. Then it’s mid-song and I hear a crash. Then I feel the floor slant. I felt like one foot higher than the other and I’m a short person so I can tell the height pretty easily,” she said.

Klein continues, “people start screaming, and the band stops playing and people back up and make a whole around the center where it caved in. The person who owns the house starts saying ‘shut the f– up, shut the f– up, be quiet we need you to all get out so we can reassess.’”

A video of the incident was shown on the popular Instagram account Zoomass.

Sean Dunham, a Junior Sociology and Spanish double major, showed up to the house just as the incident happened.

“I walked to the house and when I got there I already saw a ton of people on the porch waiting outside. When I walked through the door (to get into the house) I heard a crash and people were panicking,” he said.

Then Dunham “went outside and was hanging in the driveway to see what happened. That’s when someone said, ‘Everyone leave, the floor collapsed.’”

Klein then later returned to the house with her friend to check in on her friend’s boyfriend. She said that even after coming back later, more people were coming to the house unaware of the floor incident.

“I left initially for 20 minutes then I came back from 11-11:30. People were still showing up to the house thinking the bands were playing. Then they get there and realize that no one is there and the bands are packing up because the floor caved in,” she said.

“I was talking to one of the owners of the house and she was like ‘I’m just in a state of shock. I don’t know how to process all of this. It all happened really quickly. I don’t know what to do.’ Then she apologized to us that the show got shut down! Which is so sad because we broke her floor,” said Klein.

The next day UMASSNOISE, an unofficial student group dedicated to underground music in the UMass area, released a statement on their Instagram calling for safer shows.

They suggested having a capacity, having people work the door and showed other users comments and suggestions to make house shows safer.

When asked to comment on the situation, UMASSNOISE stated: “we will not comment on it any further than what’s already on our page about it. Feel free to look at that.” 

UMASSNOISE was not affiliated with this house Concert.

“They were just advertising on their Instagram one of the bands that was playing. You actually had to DM them for the address, so I was pretty surprised by the amount of people there,” according to the anonymous source.

Email Ethan and Ethan at [email protected] and [email protected]