Post-Event Report: Safety Northwest
In April of 2019, we sponsored the first Safety Northwest safety training weekend.
Announced at Town Hall 2019, Safety Northwest was a new event sponsored by Precipitation Northwest.
The event was a weekend retreat about safety & emergency response in festival settings.
While this first year will focus only on coordinating efforts for SOAK*2019 Safety Teams (Fire Safety, Fire Conclave Safety, Medical, Rangers, and Sanctuary), individual members of the community were encouraged to participate. SOAK volunteers and a few folks from neighboring regionals who have attended SOAK were invited. We hope to hold this event again in the future, and to expand invitations to include volunteers from all northwest regionals and festivals.
This event was an opportunity for individuals to gather, become acquainted, and train in a facilitated setting.
Held at the Tygh Valley Fairgrounds, 50 people attended to learn. It was organized by Producers Tacy (aka Hugboss) & David (aka Battalion4).
The venue was fantastic, giving us ample space and a beautiful backdrop for the weekend’s activities. The weekend opened with a Friday night social potluck, and continued Saturday with basic radio training and Incident Command System (ICS) basics. Specific immersion trainings were held on Saturday as well, which included Fire Safety, Rangers, Medical, and Sanctuary. Sunday brought together all teams for a hands-on practice ICS event, where multiple incidents overlapped and challenged all participants to demonstrate what they had learned.
After the event, Producers received positive feedback, and general interest for more opportunities to enhance radio skills and practice ICS on simulated emergencies that are likely to emerge at large volunteer-run gatherings.
In 2020, the Producers plan to invite additional teams from SOAK and other events that have influence on ICS application. We appreciated having participants from Idaho Decompression and SHIFT festival learning on site with us!
For more information about this year or next year’s event, please contact board@precipitationnw.org.