The main stage of the Tomorrowland music festival near Antwerp was totally destroyed by fire on Wednesday, a day before thousands of electronic dance music lovers were due to arrive at the Belgian event.<\/p>\n
There were no injuries, organisers said, insisting they would still go ahead with the festival over the next two weekends.<\/p>\n
Images shared on local news sites and social media showed flames and plumes of black smoke engulfing the stage and spreading to nearby woodland.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to a serious incident and fire on the Tomorrowland Mainstage, our beloved Mainstage has been severely damaged,\u201d the organisers posted on the event\u2019s website. \u201cWe can confirm that no one was injured during the incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement said the focus was now on \u201cfinding solutions\u201d for the festival weekend.<\/p>\n
The main stage of the Tomorrowland festival after Wednesday\u2019s fire. Photograph: Belga\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
About 100,000 people are expected in the town of Boom, with many planning to camp on site. The festival\u2019s DreamVille campsite would open as planned on Thursday, organisers said.<\/p>\n
Several dozen DJs and electronic music stars \u2013 including David Guetta, Lost Frequencies, Armin Van Buuren and Charlotte de Witte \u2013 will perform from Friday for the first weekend, with two-thirds of the events split between the now destroyed main stage and the freedom stage.<\/p>\n
Several hundred firefighters had worked to save the main stage. Antwerp prosecutors have opened an investigation, though they said the fire appeared accidental.<\/p>\n
Founded 20 years ago by two Belgian brothers, Tomorrowland has become an internationally renowned brand.<\/p>\n
With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main stage of the Tomorrowland music festival near Antwerp was totally destroyed by fire on Wednesday, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-268937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114867838885793729","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}