“At first when I came home, I was like oh, do we live next to the military base because normally you’ll hear lots of booms and bangs, and honestly last night, I was like is something happening that I just don’t know what’s going on,” Kiana Escobar said.
The sound Escobar heard Saturday night was coming from Snapdragon Stadium, where Niteharts, a three-day music festival, took place this weekend.
She said trying to fall asleep was nearly impossible.
“It was too loud to even try to lay down and relax…there was no way,” Kiana Escobar said. “It was like Woah… this is loud and with our doors and windows closed. It was loud! We could still hear it.”
Like her, dozens of viewers contacted NBC 7 with similar concerns. Some described the loud noise as obnoxious, others as excessively loud, unpleasant, and unrelenting. Many said the sound was so loud it traveled for miles.
Kian Zarinepaf lives near the college area and says he too could hear it from his place.
“Yesterday when I got home, I could hear it, just you know the thumping sound,” Zarinepaf said.
The managing company for Snapdragon stadium told NBC 7 in a statement they take sound concerns raised by the community members very seriously, adding that they adhere to a 95-decibel sound limit measured at the front-of-house mixing position, with all recorded readings during the Niteharts remaining at or below that threshold.
They said in part, “as this is the third year of the festival at the site, this weekend’s atmospheric weather conditions created by tropical storm Rachel played a significant role in the unusual way sound carried into the surrounding neighborhoods, as this was not experienced during earlier sound checks or previous years of the festival.
The managing company for Snapdragon said in response to the concerns raised they worked with festival production to implement additional sound mitigation measures…including lowering sound levels.
The managing company for Snapdragon said moving forward they will evaluate sound data, the effectiveness of the adjustments, and community feedback to identify improvements.