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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Olivia Ireland

Footage reveals Summernats road blockages, burnouts and fireworks

Summernats

Footage of the recent Summernats festival reveals crowds blocking roadways, fireworks being set off and burnouts which the event owner condemns as behaviour he has never seen before.

Event organiser and owner Andy Lopez expressed disappointment in the behaviour and described it as "unpleasant".

"[The behaviour] is something that we've not actually experienced before, we need to go through a debrief," he said.

"For some reason a section of crowd at the Summernats this year were really defiant and did not want to follow the rules and did not want to hear that they needed to follow the rules.

"That was the manifestation of the behaviour, it was a small number but it was unpleasant."

One video showed a car honking its horn to get through the crowds blocking the roadway, as punters yell for the driver to "have a sook" and "f--- off you wanker" before police take someone away.

Skid Row at Summernats 35. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong

The crowd then chant "bulls---" in unison.

This comes after a part of the festival had to be shut down on Saturday because people crowded onto the roadway and refused to get off, causing attendees to disperse across Canberra and police resources stretched.

Another video showed cars getting kicked out of the venue for excessive burnouts or blocking the roadway, while more crowd members later come onto the roadway.

"Just watching that I'm not sure how anyone could say how Summernats has gone soft. That was back like how it used to be like 20 years ago," the videographer said.

In what appears to be Eaglehawk, another video showed burnouts occurring and people throwing fireworks into the middle of the road, as one individual is heard saying "we'll see you tomorrow for Summernats day one".

Mr Lopez said he couldn't "imagine a more stupid and reckless group of people" and organisers were checking to see if any of the cars were entrants to the event.

ACT Policing previously said they were "disappointed that organisers were not able to maintain good order inside EPIC" however had nothing further to comment in relation to the videos.

Mr Lopez said the people being rowdy were "not our type of people" and the reason so many crowd members were engaging was the "herd mentality".

"In almost every aspect [Summernats 35] was a really wonderful event," he said.

"All events have rowdiness in them ... security's there to remind people about what the rules are."

While the event had a degree of rowdiness, this year's Summernats smashed previous attendance records at 2700 entrants which was capped.

"The Summernats will have brought in about $35 million to the ACT economy this weekend ... that's the sort of level of economic impact that it brings in," Mr Lopez said.

"We're just going to keep working hard and make the social impact continue to be a positive one."

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