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Fyre Festival organiser explains disaster in open letter: 'We weren't experienced enough to keep up'

Fyre Festival organiser explains disaster in open letter: 'We weren't experienced enough to keep up'

The co-organiser of Fyre - the festival that descended into chaos amid reports that guests were stranded at an unfinished site - has written an open letter detailing how it became such a disaster.

The luxury event, organised by Ja Rule and due to feature performances from Blink-182, Disclosure and Skepta, had been advertised on social media as a glamorous party involving supermodels Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski. Ticket prices ranged from $4,000 to $12,000.

All incoming flights to the the festival's Great Exuma Island location were cancelled with organisers postponing the event soon after.

Ja Rule's partner Billy McFarland has since written an open letter to Rolling Stone.

It reads: “Today is definitely the toughest day of my life. I'd love the opportunity to go through and tell my story of how we got here and how I see it now and where it's going.”

McFarland explained how “...a bad storm came in" the morning ahead of the festival, "[taking] down half of our tents."

“Guests started to arrive and the most basic function we take for granted in the U.S., we realised, 'Wow, we can't do this',” he continued.

“We were on a rush job to fix everything... we were overwhelmed and just didn't have the foresight to solve all these problems. We were a little naïve in thinking for the first time we could do this ourselves. Next year, we will definitely start earlier. The reality is, we weren't experienced enough to keep up”

McFarland confirmed that Fyre Festival will be taking place in 2018.

“There will be make-up dates, May 2018 in the US, free for everybody who signed up for this festival. We will donate $1.50 [per ticket] to the Bahamian Red Cross. It'll keep the theme of being on water and beach. It'll be not just music, but all forms of entertainment.

“The one change we will make is we will not try to do it ourselves. We will make sure there is infrastructure in place to support us.”

Ja Rule himself released a statement on Friday (28 April) revealing he was 'heartbroken' with how things had gone down.