The untold story of Woodstock '99

The last Woodstock edition exploded in a night of arson, looting and vandalism a year ago next week. Fed up with overflowing toilets and trash cans, an erratic supply of running water, high prices and a lack of shade on one of the summer's hottest weekends, concertgoers unleashed their anger in a fiery riot that required at least 500 state troopers to stop. The massive music festival's organisers said they were caught off guard. They shouldn't have been. The promoters - who included Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang and concert industry veteran John Scher -and officials in Rome, N.Y., and Oneida County failed to heed warning signs of disaster before and during the festival.

Based on interviews with dozens of Woodstock employees and volunteers, promoters, local officials, industry experts and police, along with reviews of internal and overnment documents, "Playing With Fire: The Untold Story of Woodstock '99" describes an event that displayed numerous danger signs before it began on July 23, 1999, and quickly became chaotic once it did start.

Members of the concert's T-shirt-wearing security force, the "Peace Patrol," stole 5,000 admission bracelets for the festival and sold them at a discount and stole boxes of security T-shirts and sold those as well, according to witnesses. Two hundred guards were fired before the festival began for threatening and bullying other employees in worker housing, according to co-promoter Lang. Some members of the Peace Patrol even took part in the rioting at the end of the festival, witnesses said.

The concert was in danger of being canceled several times because of promoters' failure to meet the terms of the event's permit. "Public health and safety of the residents and visitors of Oneida County and the validity of the festival permit are threatened," county Health Director Constance Kramer wrote to Lang five weeks before the festival, in one letter.