the glade comedown thread...

[pagan]

did anyone see the crazy naked guy there?

believe it or not, he gets paid to do that

 

[free spirit]

hi bus, here's some feedback on some of the issues raised (this is my personal response rather than an official glade response)...

sure Just general observations really

I have to say that any individual marshalls I ran across were pretty helpful - they just seems a bit swamped, and to not know where the issues were, which seemed unusual, as they're normally pretty good.

I presume you mean the stewards didn't know info about what was open when / where, which routes were closed, where was flooded etc. Thing is that even the main production and site co-ordinators didn't really know what was going on everywhere, as we were constantly dealing with new issues as they came up, so it's not surprising the information hadn't filtered out to the stewards (though it would have been good if we could have done this somehow). The situation was changing from one minute to the next across site with loads of big and little issues cropping up and being dealt with as quickly as possible. If everyone appeared swamped it was because we were (in several ways), and this wasn't helped by site vehicles including tractors getting stuck in the mud all over the place and having to be towed out, which obviously made simple jobs take ages sometimes.

Friday night we were in queues for 3 hours 2 miles from the site. One gate (in the village) was shut, with literally crowds of folks with no idea what the hell was going on. Folks were being turned away from that gate, but not told that there was another a mile or two down the road. There were quite a few seriously grumpy people, with it appeared, no idea what to do or where to go.

Other folks were just abandoning cars by the side of the road, and walking in. There were probably a couple of hundred cars there blocking footpaths, people's driveways and stuff. That's probably more of a policing issue really (they were equally invisible) but some form of traffic control, and a presence to tell people what was going on might have made things better.

this is an issue that has been noted, and I'm presonally i bit pissed off that more information about the situation outside wasn't being fed back to the production office as we'd probably have arranged to reopen the gates using my team had we known how bad it was.

Once we got in, our wristbands wern't checked moving from the campervan fields, to the site once. Also the access to the site from the campervan fields had a river going through it, that was kind of dark, fast moving and pretty close to welly top height. it was a bit hairy, and a couple of folks went over..no one mentioned of course that 20 yards away was another entrance that was river free...

bugger - I did get reports about one of the pedestrian bridges being badly flooded and went to check it out but got duff information and didn't realise it was that one or I'd have sorted it out. Not sure about the wristbands being checked, I'm guessing this was an oxfam job, and they were too stretched to cover it or something.

Also, i thought there was a no glass policy? if there was, it wasn't enforced, and given the amount of people sloshing around in bare feet, I hope no one got hurt.

dunno, I didn't particularly notice much glass on site, maybe it was more prevalent in the camper van field as it's harder to check big vehicles for glass.

the toilets were a fecking nightmare - and weren't cleaned enough. They were also very helpfully locked around 10am monday, which considering how much peeps were struggling to get off site, wasn't that helpful.

the toilet truck was finding it really hard to get around the site to clean the toilets, and couldn't get to some of them at all in the mud for ages. There were also a few points where it did get stuck in the mud and was then out of action til we could get the tractor boys to tow it out again.
There was also the problem on friday that the toilet truck couldn't actually leave the site to unload once it was full due to the flooding on the roads (and we couldn't bring extra toilet trucks on site for the same reason), so for much of friday afternoon there was just no way we could empty the toilets at all.

The site turned into a bit of a health and safety nightmare by Sunday. Bogs had formed in some areas to almost knee height. These should have been cordoned off really, and wern't.

hmm we did try to cordon as many of the worst boggy bits off as we could, but by sunday had totally run out of stakes & nearly run out of red & white tape, plus half the bits we did tape off didn't last long as muntered people walked into them and broke them. We were down to moving metal fencing by hand across much of the site too, and to be honest were still digging the additional drainage ditches backstage to attempt to drain the site as much as possible rather than fencing off the bogs (which were all over the place).

Also on sunday we suddenly had to change our focus to warning people about the severe weather warning for monday & making contingency plans for getting 16,500 people offsite before the entire area flooded again on monday afternoon as predicted. Fuck knows what happened to the predicted rain storm on monday, but if that had hit as the met office were saying it was going to anyone left on site at that stage would have been stuck for days.

The car parks had SO few stewards in on monday. The ones that were there really seemed to be trying to help, but were just overwhelmed by the number of people trying to get out. We passed a metal trackway that seemes to have been pulled up and stacked up on the grass when we did get out, which didn't seem hugely helpful. People having to pay anything up to £40 to get their cars pulled out seemed a bit steep too. The car parks were a bit of an acident waiting to happen too tbh. Loads of cars spinning all over the place trying to keep moving, and then unable to steer in the mud. we saw 2 cars get hit - but I'll be amazed if no people were.

the trackway you saw piled up wasn't trackway it was sections of the perimeter fence that had been pulled down to create additional exit points from the car parks. We were also using both the perimiter fence and herrace fence to create additional trackways to get people out of the carparks, which is going to cost a fortune to replace.

You're right there should have been additional people in the carparks & directing traffic etc to manage the situation. The problem is that the staffing levels in the carparks usually only need to be pretty light on the sunday and monday, so the rotas had been done on that basis. Unfortunately there just weren't the extra staff available to through at the carparks by that stage, other than those we did manage to get over there (the staffing levels were significantly higher than planned). My team almost ended up over there, but instead had to jump in and sort out the back stage traffic management system as we'd got traffic backing up from the gate all the way into the backstage area at points because half the usual one way system wasn't useable.

I'm not really sure what was going on in the main carparks, but know the team who run that area and know they'd have been doing there best to sort it out with the resources available... see the bits about creating additional exit points etc. for evidence that we were on it as best we could be.

Overall, it was a good fest, and i had a blast, but the organisation wasn't great. Sure they took a lot of water, and did well to get things up and running at all, but we'd known that was going to be a wet 'un for a week. Contingency planning didn't seem to exist really, and preparation for the rain seemed non existent. Marshalls and police didn't seem to be in the right place, at the right time, and were overwhelmed when they were.

contingency planning did exist, which was why we managed to get through some of the worst flooding in 50 years and run a virtually full programme without any major incidents while school children half a mile down the road were being rowed out by the fire brigade. In fact we were even sending pumps, lighting towers and generators into the village to assist them our level of back up resources was that good.

Unfortunately several bits of the contingency planning relied on us being able to bring additional resources onto site if required, which kinda fucks up when all the local roads are flooded along with most of the motorways and a roads, meaning that a lot of stuff ordered either never made it to the site, or took 15 hours to get here from 1-2 hours standard drive away.

lessons have been learnt though, and next year we'll be utterly prepared for absolutely anything nature throws at us - this was the first time we'd really seen the site in the rain.

 

[free spirit]

Music wise? A+, no worries on that score. Organisation? d-, must try harder, felt a bit like being at a £30 hippy fest, only with food and beer prices from Ascot.

hmm not sure I agree with the d- score on the organisation front. A lot of people who really know the score were utterly amazed at how we dealt with this situation, and how well we managed to get through it.

Had this been a £30 hippy festival you really would have been looking at a major incident needing the emergency services / army to help evacuate the site. Instead we were able to cope with it ourselves with no additional support, and even help out the local village.

Ok so it wasn't the super slick operation we'd hope it to be under normal circumstances, but these were far from normal circumstances, and I'm incredibly impressed that we managed to get through it as well as we did.

full marks to the glade crowd too for being proper hardcore party people and carrying on partying despite the mud with very few complaints. Had this festival been full of arseholes the crew would probably have just sacked it off and left them to it, but the positivity from the crowd kept the crew motivated to keep it running.

 

[free spirit]

Had a great festival, but my car is now dead It was parked at the bottom of the hill and water was well over the bonnet on it after the heavy rain - you can see the water line. I really didn't need this hassle! No way to get to work or anything now. I am annoyed at the organisers, as they knew there were severe weather warnings, but they continued to park people in risky places. I am thinking about maybe claiming off the festival organisers, but don't really want to take their money! Will they be insured at all???

hmm, I'm not really sure what to say about this, sounds pretty crap, and the carpark people should really have known not to park people in areas likely to be flooded, though to be fair none of us really expected the flooding to be as bad as it was, and even the site owner's never seen it this bad.

The festival's insurance company would probably argue that this was an act of god type incident rather than negligence on the festival's part, so it'd probably go to court (though not necessarily).

I guess the best thing you could do would be to email the festival and ask about it nicely (there's a definate thing of dealing nicely with nice people at the moment here), just explain the situation and ask if there's any way the festival can claim off their insurance for this / help out with repair costs etc.

hopefully once it's all dried out and been given a clean it should work ok, probably the spark plugs & electrics are all wet etc. though it being muddy water won't help.

 

[free spirit]

more later when I get chance

 

[bus]

hmm not sure I agree with the d- score on the organisation front. A lot of people who really know the score were utterly amazed at how we dealt with this situation, and how well we managed to get through it.

Thanks for the response. Whether it came across or not, the comments i made were meant in a positive way (even though some were negative...does that make sense? I doubt it...it's still early...). It is interesting to hear the point of view of someone involved in the organisation, so thanks for taking the time

I guess my view is inevitably coloured by being a punter - inevitable really, and so to me "D-" seems a pretty fair score for the organisational side of things. There was some stuff that would have made a difference missing - where was the straw, or the bark? where was the traffic control, or the additional taps? Where were the hard trackways? Certain bits felt out of control - not in a dull "ooh we're in health & safety and you can't dance in this tent cos ther's a bit of water in it" way (it's just water FFS), but in a "there are cars skidding around all over the place and someone is going to be killed" fashion.

In the same way being involved, your view wil be coloured by that experience too, and if I were you, to be really honest, having someone being critical after going through that must be a bit galling, and hey perhaps it all was more under control, and my view is still coloured by the fact my legs still ache, and i'll have ingrained much under my fingernails till i die .

Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle (it usually is) and that things were nowhere near as bas as they appeared, but there are definately some things worth learning for next time.

Regardless, I still had a great time, and whether there were problems with teh organisational side of things or not, its obvious a lot of people put in a herculean effort to keep things running, and everyone who was there shuld be aware of that and be a bit grateful for it

 

[free spirit]

Thanks for the response. Whether it came across or not, the comments i made were meant in a positive way (even though some were negative...does that make sense? I doubt it...it's still early...). It is interesting to hear the point of view of someone involved in the organisation, so thanks for taking the time

I guess my view is inevitably coloured by being a punter - inevitable really, and so to me "D-" seems a pretty fair score for the organisational side of things. There was some stuff that would have made a difference missing - where was the straw, or the bark? where was the traffic control, or the additional taps? Where were the hard trackways? Certain bits felt out of control - not in a dull "ooh we're in health & safety and you can't dance in this tent cos ther's a bit of water in it" way (it's just water FFS), but in a "there are cars skidding around all over the place and someone is going to be killed" fashion.

In the same way being involved, your view wil be coloured by that experience too, and if I were you, to be really honest, having someone being critical after going through that must be a bit galling, and hey perhaps it all was more under control, and my view is still coloured by the fact my legs still ache, and i'll have ingrained much under my fingernails till i die .

Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle (it usually is) and that things were nowhere near as bas as they appeared, but there are definately some things worth learning for next time.

Regardless, I still had a great time, and whether there were problems with teh organisational side of things or not, its obvious a lot of people put in a herculean effort to keep things running, and everyone who was there shuld be aware of that and be a bit grateful for it

lol - no actually I really want to get as much feedback as possible from people on things that we could have done better etc. as most of the feedback is backing up stuff that I'm thinking myself / thought at the time / tried to sort out, and will be going into the report I'm going to write shortly to send to glade.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I was not involved in any way in the planning or set up process, I was running the production A-Team which was a small team of people essentially acting as a trouble shooting team for the production side of the festival... and there was a lot of trouble to be shooted, much of which could have been trouble shooted in advance IMO.

hopefully next year a lot of lessons will have been learnt, and people like me will actually have proper input into the planning process rather than just turning up and trying to deal with whatever's thrown at us as best we can.

so please keep the constructive criticism coming

 

[pagan]

Nice one Free Spirit, not just for taking the time to respond to people's criticisms but for the obviously sterling job that you and your crew did over the weekend. I've really got no criticisms of the organisers under the circumstances. Yeah, there were bogs, yeah the toilets and urinals by the stages (in the bottom of th evalley) were rank but what can you do? Me and my mates had all chipped in to pay £300 for a tipi that you ended up having to climb over tents to get to but what can you do when so much of the ground was uncampable? You just get on with it in true Dunkirk stylee. It would have been the most hard core festival that most punters would have been to or will ever go to but it was.....character building
I understand Bus's (and others) frustration but it was a unique (in 60 or maybe even 100 years) situation and man, we just had to get on with it and it was an occaison that I don't think anyone will ever forget and I for one am very proud to have been a part of.

BTW, does anyone have any incident statistics, arrests etc? I'd be interested:

 

[Mooncat]

so please keep the constructive criticism coming

I really don't think you lot could have done any better and as a regular free party goer I try and pick as many holes in your organisation as possible!
There was some issue a friend had about having to steward without enough protective gear - not sure if its down to the organisers to provide this but he was in a bit of a bad way after standing in the rain for god knows how long.

It was a wet soggy mess from the start and to be honest, the people complaining about getting stuck in the mud or whatever should probably just stay at home like the wet blankets they are

 

[JTG]

For those who haven't seen it yet:


Bless 'em

 

[Lisarocket]

For those who haven't seen it yet:


Bless 'em

Someone should stick a link to that on the Womad boards to give the moaners over there a bit of perspective

 

[JTG]

Someone should stick a link to that on the Womad boards to give the moaners over there a bit of perspective

exactly

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

For those who haven't seen it yet:


Bless 'em

Quality

 

[aqua]

fucking knobs

sorry, as much as I love dreadzone my heart goes to all the houses who were affected by the wake from these guys

maybe its too close for me to think this is funny

 

[Kanda]

As Aqua says, thats what a lot of the villagers were complaining about. People creating huge surges of water into their houses

 

[Dubversion]

occasionally, they'd have got their revenge. You know, like when some fuckwit didn't shut their window when they splashed through.

eh, kanda?

 

[aqua]

and after your house has been one of those affected by it, I still think they're fucking knobs

and for anyone who knows how much I love dreadzone, you know that I mean it

those wakes caused by cars were really fucking over people all over the country - sorry guys, but its just utterly fucking selfish

 

[Kanda]

occasionally, they'd have got their revenge. You know, like when some fuckwit didn't shut their window when they splashed through.

eh, kanda?

There were no houses there though

You forgot about ensuring your window was shut when getting towed, stopping yourself from getting spattered with mud

 

[JTG]

Given that most people in the UK aren't used to the effects of flooding, and that any effects of their wake will of course happen behind them, do you think they actually realised what may happen?

I wouldn't have done.

 

[aqua]

thats why i said i thought i was too close to it

although if you drive tbh you should know things like this

 

[JTG]

thats why i said i thought i was too close to it

although if you drive tbh you should know things like this

yeah well, it's only for those driving to know whether they knew it was a possibility and if so whether it bothered them

I'm a charitable soul by and large (though I don't often give that impression on Urban ) and I like to think it was just thoughtlessness rather than anything else.

It was cool to see the state of the roads though, being trapped on site you had no idea what it looked like out there.