In Las Vegas, Concert Security Met a New Threat: Aerial Assault

But even with the gradual ratcheting up of protections, a new wave of mass casualty events has highlighted the ways determined attackers can wreak havoc by shifting their focus to the areas immediately surrounding a venue.

In Las Vegas, the gunman, Stephen Paddock, executed his killing spree from a towering window at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino — around 400 yards away from the festival venue — well outside the usual security perimeter of pat-downs and metal detectors that is created for such events. He slipped the hotel’s own security apparatus, and chose an open-air target that is by definition vulnerable from a high elevation.

“We have to go back to Lee Harvey Oswald on the book depository to conjure a similar scenario,” said Steven A. Adelman, vice president of the Event Safety Alliance, by telephone Monday afternoon, referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “This really is unique.”

Louis Marciani, the director of the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, struggled to imagine how a similar assault might be prevented in the future. “There’s no way that any good operation would have caught that,” he said of the shooting. “We’ve now got to go back to the drawing board.”

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Las Vegas Village, the site of Route 91 Harvest Festival, is owned by the same company — MGM Resorts International — as the hotel where Mr. Paddock opened fire. It is likely that there was at least some preplanning between the two facilities before the festival took place. (MGM has not commented.) But even if Mandalay Bay was on high alert last weekend, snaring Mr. Paddock would likely have required a level of screening that far exceeds current practices.

“You’d have to have X-ray machines and magnetometers at every single entrance,” said Mr. Adelman. “No hotel does that.”

Festival organizers could choose to avoid locations near the sorts of tall buildings that can offer gunmen cover and a clear vantage, but Mr. Adelman suggested that other loopholes would then emerge. “Do you not hold festivals near hills or tall trees?” he wondered. “Do you ban trucks?”

Mr. Dorenfeld offered a similarly rueful hypothetical. Does every festival now have to be like Bonnaroo, “in the middle of an open field?” But he stressed that procedures are constantly evolving. “I go to these festivals and I look around and I’m so impressed,” he said. “Security is really good and it’ll just get better.”

For the people behind Austin City Limits, which will bring 75,000 music fans to Zilker Park in Austin, Tex., this weekend, the question of how to keep people safe is now freighted with even more pressing urgency than usual.

Security professionals and some event promoters have called for expanding the perimeter around so-called “soft targets,” and for increased coordination between venues and neighboring businesses.

Following the Las Vegas shooting, the producer of the Austin festival, C3 Presents, released a statement detailing a “layered security plan that includes elements that are seen and unseen,” and that will include “an enhanced security and law enforcement presence inside and outside the festival.”

The company also announced that it would offer refunds to any fans concerned about safety.

The Austin police chief, Brian Manley, said on Monday: “It’s not that it’s a threat that we are not aware of, but whenever you have an incident occur you always have to be concerned about copycats — someone that looks at this as an opportunity.” In a news conference, he added that officers had already visited condos on the park’s north side that partially overlook the festival grounds.

Chief Manley struggled to buoy his tone while speaking to would-be festival attendees, though he urged them to continue to “do the things that we enjoy.”

But he ended the news conference with an unvarnished caveat. “We live in a world now where you cannot protect against every single threat,” he said.

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