Welcome to the IAFE special edition of the Safety Corner! I probably should have saved some of the Fairground inspection points for this issue, but if you subscribe you have already read all about it in the previous issue. So, we will talk about other areas to be aware of.

I have talked about all kinds of areas to help make the events safer places for our guests over the past season and every month we try and come up with another area that may help promote safety in our industry.

As the weather starts getting cooler, we should all be thinking about putting the equipment away and making sure it's stored properly. On the Fairgrounds side of the business, we should be winterizing the buildings or bathrooms in the northern states. Or have we checked that the furnaces or pipe heaters are working? Have we put out rodent traps or other ways to deal with them to help keep the wiring in the buildings from getting chewed up, or from any other infestations in the off season?

The south can have off-season issues as well like mold from moisture and the heat, all kinds of things that just keep us all on our game to be able to continue in the Great Outdoor Amusement Business. How about the fairgrounds that use their buildings to rent storage to people in the off season? How many fairs fill the exhibition barns with boats and RVs in the off season? If you rent out storage, is there a policy to drain the fuel or disconnect the batteries on the vehicles inside?

What about propane bottles? As a kid, I remember at the New York State Fairgrounds there was a farm building that was used every weekend for an indoor flea market. If memory serves me correctly, there was some kind of gas leak and the building burned down along with all the permanent vendors' equipment and goods. I remember because my mom used to sell toys and apples at the flea market in the off-season and had moved out the week before because it was almost time to get ready to go back on the road for the summer. Someone was watching out for her, but not the fair or anyone else involved. So just another thing that makes you go hmmm.

The traveling shows in the north must winterize their food trailers and living quarters. That is something I also learned about from my dad; how to pressurize the water lines and blow the water out of the ice makers and all the lines, because it makes a mess in the spring the first time you hook water back up. If there was water in the lines somewhere, you now may have a burst pipe or hose. Make sure to maintain your equipment and it will help you maintain your lifestyle.

What does properly storing the equipment have to do with safety, you ask? Well, it does because it ties into policies and procedures for maintaining the equipment. So, ask the powers to be, do we have a policy in place to prepare for the off season? If the answer is no, then work on making one. So enough about that, on to another topic now.

As the Fair conventions get underway across the country and everyone is discussing what worked and what didn't work at their fair, try and communicate the ideas and/or policies that helped make the fair or event a safer place for the guest. I sure hope I get some feedback on this topic because I know there are lots of safety managers across the country that learned something new at their fair this year, and if we could all share that information think how much we could improve our already excellent safety track record.

I'm sure that there will be discussions on metal detectors at the gates and the pros and cons of having them. If your fair used them this past year or maybe they have been using them, I hope that you share feedback with other fairs in the area that might not have them. At minimum, discuss fairgrounds security. Maybe you don't need or want metal detectors because if someone wants to do bad things, they will find a way. I know of a fair that put a perimeter fence around their grounds to hopefully eliminate someone stashing something under the fence until they go inside and then could retrieve it. It's a crazy world we live in these days, and we always must be thinking of ways to protect our event or show.

How about a security presence being visible to the public or being able to monitor the crowds? Several events have used many different devices to monitor the crowds from drones to having elevated platforms located in heavy traffic areas of the midways. These elevated platforms help the security personnel see what's happening in the crowd and identify problems hopefully before they escalate. Hopefully just the sight of them reduces the potential of some unique individual starting an incident that becomes a larger problem and spreads throughout the midway.

So, at the next fair board meeting discuss what worked and what didn't at this past fair or event and make a plan to try and be better prepared next year.

We had a couple of State Fairs this season where we had some bad weather come through and the midways had to close because of lightning and high winds. Does your fair or event have a policy to notify everyone on the grounds to seek shelter? The NC State fair has set up a geofence around the grounds and when the extreme weather approached, they used it to alert everyone's cell phones to seek shelter. And once the storm had passed, an all-clear message went out for notification that the rides and outside activities would be resuming. If you're a large event and want to do something like this to protect your guests, you may want to investigate it.

How about traffic control at the event, & how trained are the people that are parking the cars in the parking lots? Have they received any training, or are they just handed a safety vest and a red coned flashlight and said start the line up here and go that way until the field is full? Hopefully there is some organization to the madness that becomes a sea of cars during the busy days of the fair.

Do you have someone that puts lines in the field for center lines and are they at least 60 feet apart to allow for adequate backing out room and two-way traffic? These are all things to think about before the gates open and since we have all winter to think about how our event went, I wanted to get you thinking about it. If you don't have a designated parking coordinator, you might want to discuss it at the next meeting before the Christmas party.

How about lighting in the parking lots of the event? Is anyone out there checking to see if we need to add another portable light tower or if a light on a pole has burned out and the area has a dark spot now? These are all things that your coordinator should be looking at or at minimum someone from the fair board be checking. Lots of things can happen in the dark from someone falling on something they didn't see or from someone hiding in the shadows looking to do harm to someone. Again, it's a sad world we are living in, but we must make the best of it and look for potential exposures and proactively correct them.

I like to cover many different ideas in these messages, and I want to sidetrack for a moment to share with you the words that my grandfather had printed on the back of his business card in the 1950s when a competitor was going around signing contracts with events in upstate New York offering a couple percent more from the ride gross and a couple of dollars more per concession on the grounds. He didn't have the equipment or the quality to compete with some of the competition back then.

I was reminded of it again last week and quoted it to a potential client who said that the rates for our services were too high and that he didn't realize that it would cost that much to just come inspect a couple rides. I explained that there are all kinds of expenses that go into the travel just to get to the event and the certifications and the insurance; the list just goes on and on. Then he proceeded to tell me that he would just find someone that would do it cheaper and hung up after I quoted him what is written below.

Now I believe we are very competitive with our fees considering the current state of the economy and anyone that knows me knows we go above and beyond for our clients. But there are those that will just sell a signature out there. Slowly but surely, they are being thinned out of the inspection pool. I always say stay humble but sometimes you must stand up and say sorry we can't help you. So here is the quote and please feel free to use it in whatever line of work you do because it applies to a whole lot of things.

“Quality --- is like buying oats; if you want nice, fresh, clean oats, you must pay a fair price. However, if you can be satisfied with oats that have already been through the horse – that comes a little cheaper.”

So, in conclusion, I've hopefully given you some areas to think about on the grounds, on the equipment we use, and hopefully some talking points for the next fair board or carnival safety meeting. There are so many areas to potentially make our events safer and more secure, but we still must remember we are in the entertainment business. We can't regulate or restrict our guests from having fun and making memories. Please tell others about what you have read here and if they aren't subscribing to the magazine they should be.

I hope that you gained one piece of information from this short article on safety and can help make our industry safer and better every day. I can be reached via email avery@worldwidesafetygroup.com or at 813-505-3938 for any questions or comments, please feel free to provide feedback to help me better communicate these safety related messages. Remember “Our World Revolves Around Safety!”