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Evacuating Shambhala would be easier than a regular community, director says

The instant town will have about 15,000 residents next weekend
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A Shambhala crew in 2016. Photo: Ricardo Hubbs

Evacuating the 15,000 people at the Shambhala Music Festival in a wildfire emergency would be much easier than evacuating a regular town, says its public safety director.

“It’s a more well-defined space than a city that is spread out in individual homes where you wouldn’t know if they are home or not,” said Chris Armstrong, who spoke to the Star ahead of annual event that begins Friday.

He said the festival has 2,500 staff, all of whom are trained in emergency protocols and who are in constant communication with each other.

“Just like in any other city or large organization, you have emergency response plans for all the things you can think of that could possibly happen,” Armstrong said. “For a fire evacuation or any evacuation, we have response plans for that.”

Armstrong said he has 21 years of experience in search and rescue and emergency management.

Asked if an evacuation or fire hazard would be affected by a considerable number people being in a variety of altered states, Armstrong said that would not be true of the staff.

“Every year there are people with candles, people with cigarette butts, people putting cigarette buts in dumpsters.”

But he said there are 130 security people roaming the grounds.

“We have 25 trained fire fighters out here, so there is not much that can happen that we can’t put it out on our own before any call gets made. We have a bigger fire system than most small communities, we have our own fire department, trucks, more trained fire personnel than most towns, and we have a 500-acre piece of property and 150 of it is open field.”

Armstrong admitted there are some difficulties with the single-road access, but he pointed out that the festival site is less than a half kilometre from the highway, so people would walk out either on the road or in the mostly ankle-deep river. It would take 24 hours to evacuate everyone with their vehicles, he said.

Once people had walked to the highway, there would be a question of where they would go from there, he said.

“But that is absolutely the remotest possibility, and there would be enough ramp up and warning for that, and arrangements would be made with Emergency Management B.C., they would be there and have a check-in system for them as displaced travellers.”

Armstrong said the Southeast Fire Centre and regional emergency management staff would give warnings and alerts, and once an alert was given, the festival would start preparing. Most of the evacuation protocols, he said, are not to actually evacuate, but to prepare for it.

“It’s no different from any other community,” Armstrong said. “The difference is that we have 2,500 staff to pull it off.”

“If another community were to get evacuated, they would be better off to come here,” he said.

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The instant, temporary city of Shambhala in 2016. Photo: Bryce Duffy


Bill Metcalfe

About the Author: Bill Metcalfe

I have lived in Nelson since 1994 and worked as a reporter at the Nelson Star since 2015.
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