Last weekend’s Pitch Music and Arts Festival was supposed to be a four-day revelry of electronic music in the Grampians, three hours east of Melbourne. But soaring temperatures,Pitch is far from the first event in Australia to be impacted by extreme weather. Over the same weekend, Yarraville Festival in Melbourne’s inner-west, originally scheduled for Sunday, wasThe Pitch Festival was shut down due to extreme heat and fire danger.
Dr Milad Haghani, a senior lecturer of urban mobility, public safety and disaster risk at UNSW, says a key takeaway from Pitch is the importance of involving attendees more directly in risk assessments before the event begins. “We had a full team of emergency services including medical, police and on-site fire response who were on call throughout the event, as well as Crowd Care, an initiative to support emergency teams and patrons on site, and over 30 staffers fromPitch organisers were regularly sharing updates via social media; however, Revell says many of the attendees were unable to access these due to poor cell service and a lack of Wi-Fi.
As a result, Mitch Wilson, managing director of the Australian Festival Association, says the insurance industry has unilaterally stopped covering major events held in areas that are more likely to be hit with extreme weather.Some organisers may need to consider relocating festivals to less remote spaces, ensuring attendees can more easily evacuate in emergencies.
Specific data on festivals’ carbon footprint is lacking due to the absence of a comprehensive greenhouse gas audit within the industry, Haghani says, but the UK could act as a reference point.
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