CMP SERIES CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE

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‘Nowadays, there is much more of a focus on situational awareness regarding weather.’

s the winds began to pick up in downtown Chicago on the second day of the 2012 Lollapalooza music festival, organiz-

ers were prepared. The forecast had called for extreme winds and rain — gusts of more than 70 miles per hour, and precipitation (including hail), heavy enough to cause flash floods, according to the National Weather Service. Since the three-day event put down roots in Chicago’s Grant Park back in 2005, Lollapalooza had never been evacu- ated — not even last year, during hours of torren- tial downpours. But the festival, held this year on Aug. 3–5,

generally attracts upward of 160,000 attendees over the three days — and with more than 60,000 concertgoers enjoying themselves in Grant Park that Saturday, Aug. 4, and 42 artists set to perform, Lollapalooza’s organizers and Chicago safety offi- cials had a difficult decision to make. “Responses are coordinated among Chicago police, fire, and the OEMC [Chicago’s Office of Emergency Man- agement and Communication],” said Delores Robinson, the OEMC’s director of news affairs, “to

70 PCMA CONVENE NOVEMBER 2012

determine, when an emergency situation arises, weather or otherwise, what warrants the termina- tion of event festivities.” That decision did not come without months of

preparation — as experienced meeting profession- als know. “With any major event, outdoors and indoors, when you’re planning, you should antici- pate what potential problems you can have,” said Charlie Fisher of Witt Associates, a Washington, D.C.–based crisis-management consulting firm. “Outdoors, what types of issues could potentially occur with weather? If indoors, what happens when you lose power? Identify what your poten- tial threats are, and develop a comprehensive emergency-management plan that very clearly lays it out.” Witt Associates recently conducted an eight-

month independent assessment of emergency preparedness by the organizers of the Indiana State Fair, where seven people were killed and more than 50 were injured when a stage collapsed during harsh winds in August 2011. While Fisher wasn’t involved with Lollapalooza in any way, he

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