“We Are in the Entertainment Business, Not the Emergency Business… Aren’t We?”

Written by Eric Stuart QPM, BA hons (CSM), UKCMA, Director of Gentian Events Ltd.

So, how do we prepare for crowd emergencies and what do those emergencies look like? I will answer the second one first: everything and anything that might impact negatively, hurt, scare, or kill your crowd should be considered a crowd emergency. “What? Are you mad? How can I plan for every possibility?” I hear you ask. Well the answer is you can’t, and you do not have to. What you have to do is plan to deal with reasonably foreseeable emergencies. If we started to make a list this article might never finish. For example, weather. Heat, cold, wind, rain, snow, lightning, and so on. And not only outdoors – what if you evacuate a theatre because of a smell of smoke but you send people into a raging thunderstorm?

This article was written for 2019 Fall Safety Scene Magazine.