Stagecoach Festival chaos: 80,000 forced to evacuate as wild weather batters venue

The dust has finally settled at Stagecoach festival after a night of wild weather swept the country music event.

Festivalgoers in Indio, California were met with wind gusts reaching up to 105 kilometres per hour, with organisers forced to issue an emergency evacuation notice as the weather raged on at the annual event, held over the weekend.

Despite the delay as over 80,000 attendees made for the exits, the show was back on the road in just a few short hours – though not without plenty of chaos and set cancellations in the process.

Watch the video above.

Footage from the event shared to social media showed an urgent message flashing on festival screens, urging attendees to exit the grounds.

"Emergency Evacuation," the alert read.

"The festival has been postponed until further notice. Please move quickly and calmly to the nearest exit."

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A similar message was sent out to concertgoers via the Stagecoach app soon after, as tens of thousands of people poured out of the festival grounds.

One woman claimed there had been some difficulty with evacuations across the event, describing "stampedes" and "screaming people everywhere," amid the chaos.

Another video shared by festivalgoer Shan Peterson showed the true extent of the wild weather, as she and her friends evacuated through shots of windswept trees and debris.

But the festival was back on its horse in no time following the evacuations, with winds dying down considerably within an hour.

The Stagecoach social media pages posted a message noting "the show [would] resume momentarily," and that staff members were working to prepare the site for fans to return.

But some fans were left despondent after following emergency evacuation protocol and missing out on the rest of the evening's events after they'd resumed.

"Now we can't see the shows we paid darn good money for that went on despite us following all their instructions!?

"We weren't told to hang out and wait it out.. we were told to evacuate," one fan revealed on Reddit.

Other fans who managed to return were also disappointed, as a number of acts' sets were cut short or cancelled due to the emergency.

Legendary American rock band Journey's highly anticipated set was canned at the 11th hour, with the ensemble evacuating alongside festival goers during the initial bout of high winds.

DJ Marshmello, meanwhile, had been just 15 minutes into his high-energy set when the call to evacuate was made.

Country singer Riley Green also had his set scrapped due to schedule delays, however he delighted fans by making a surprise guest appearance during festival headliner Lainey Wilson's set later that evening.

Wilson took to the stage for a triumphant performance less than two hours after the initial chaos, thanking crowds for toughing out the wild weather to be there.

"Thank you so much for sticking out the wind," the singer told the crowd, per Billboard.

"Hopefully you sat in y'all's cars for a bit and drank some tequila."

And it wasn't just fans who had braved the storm to see their favourite acts.

Hollywood heavyweight Tom Hanks was also spotted among the masses as he showed face in support of his country singer son, Chet.

One star-struck festivalgoer shared a sweet clip of a cowboy hat-clad Hanks channelling his inner Sherriff Woody for the occasion, bopping and singing along to his son's performance.

"Watching Chet Hanks then realising his dad is standing right next to me," the fan captioned the video.

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