incident in June; when a motorbike backfired,
and people ‘heard’ gunshots in New York; and
just this August, self-evacuations at Bank Station,
London where 22 people were injured. Free
running crowds will hurt themselves and each
other. God forbid that we have used lorries
and concrete blocks at the end of the street
because when the crowd runs, suddenly, they
are running into that funnel that kills people!
Oh, and what about the inadvertent and
ridiculously coincidental failure of four safety
systems at one of my events this year that led
to human waste, (yes, that type of waste and
its ‘Blue Elsen’ chemical cocktail), being fed
backwards from the washrooms into the public
clean drinking water system. I look forward
to sharing that story with you at the ‘Actsafe
Entertainment Safety Conference’ in March,
2020!
Hang on though, this is supposed to be fun
isn’t it, this event planning and festival thingy
that we all do? We are in the entertainment
business, not the emergency business. Well I am
sorry, but if that is what you are thinking, you are
wrong. You are wrong because the minute you
invite people to be entertained, explicitly or not,
by ticket, payment, or free, or just by staging
a show, then your responsibilities to the safety
of those people has begun. In some ways you
are more fortunate than we are in the UK. You
follow more of a US style justice system where
the priority seems to be compensation. Ours is
about imprisoning those who hurt others, be it
intentional or carelessness, and that includes
a charge we refer to as ‘Gross Negligence
Manslaughter’.
So how do we prepare? Well, we
start with good planning and a
team of ‘competent’ people who
know their roles in emergencies.
Know your ‘ball bearings’ i.e.
those who make things run
smoothly, from your ‘cookies’ i.e.
those people who crumble under
pressure. Test your plans by putting
them under some scrutiny, getting
others to ask probing questions.
‘Table topping’ those things you
don’t want to happen is the best
way of knowing if you can cope
if they ever do. It doesn’t have to
be formal, it doesn’t have to be a
room of 100 people practicing for
an airliner crashing on your site,
but it should be asking what you
do when lightning is 10 miles, 5
miles and 2 miles from your site.
You can just run scenarios in your
office and play ‘yes, but what if’
games.
Good communication doesn’t mean just
hoping that the cell phones will work mid-crisis
(they won’t). It’s about having a control room
or fall-back centre, with comms, lights, and
power where your crisis team can quickly meet
and establish control. It relies on not assuming
that the emergency services will take over in
seconds, and accepting that you will be in
charge for a period of time.
During my 12-hour water contamination
incident I continued running the 3-day show,
managed the health emergency, and was
the lead on four other significant incidents,
including a drone crash and a ‘terrorist’
incident (that ultimately wasn’t). I was tested
to my limit, but a good team, a quiet building,
frequent cups of tea, and a damn good loggist
(in this case, my wife), meant we managed it
all, took praise from all the emergency services,
and now have a 24-page accurate record of
just how we did it. Want to know more? Well
join us at the Actsafe Entertainment Safety
Conference or at one of my Crowd Safety
Workshops in March, 2020. actsafeconference.
ca.
Fall 2019 Edition: Emergency Preparedness
Safety Scene 3