After last year's Sunset Music Festival storms, safety is a top concern – Tampa Bay Times

John Santoro knew nasty weather might force him to pull the plug on his biggest party.
“We’re in Tampa,” said the co-organizer of the annual Sunset Music Festival, a fluorescent carnival of electronic dance music that returns this Saturday and Sunday to Raymond James Stadium. “It just goes with the territory.”
He’s right. There’s a 50 percent chance of rain for this weekend’s event, and the festival is expecting about 10,000 more people than in the past. It’s bringing what happened last year back into focus.
[Related: The weirdest looks from last year’s Sunset Music Festival]
Safely evacuating a crowd of 20,000 is no easy feat, especially under the threat of lightning, high winds and quarter-sized hail. When storms forced Santoro to cut the power at Sunset ’14, plenty of fans were initially confused. Many at the gate chanted profanities.
But by and large, the evacuation went off without a hitch, with no riots and no injuries. When the gates reopened shortly thereafter, it was like the party never stopped.
“It actually worked out to plan, and that never happens,” said James “Disco Donnie” Estopinal, Jr., Sunset’s other co-organizer. “People were very understanding, they went where we told them to go, and it worked out perfect.”
It’s a minor miracle, because it so often doesn’t.
Of all the challenges to putting together a major music festival — permitting, crowd control, security, water, drugs — few loom as large as bad weather. Here in Florida, where every event is dependent on the forecast, organizers of festivals like Sunset spend weeks working with local officials on emergency weather contingencies. They have to, lest they go down alongside some of the most notorious tragedies in music history.
In 2011, high winds brought down a huge stage at the Indiana State Fair before a concert by the country duo Sugarland, killing seven and resulting in a $39 million class action settlement. Not long after, Belgium’s Pukkelpop Festival was cut short when storms ripped through the grounds, killing five and injuring 140.
Even when nobody dies, inclement weather can still stir up bad blood that puts fans at risk. Just last month, Disco Donnie’s inaugural Something Wonderful festival at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas was cleared out due to high winds and lightning around 8 p.m., and canceled outright two hours later. Fans blitzed social media with the hashtags #SomethingHorrible and #SomethingTerrible, and according to the Dallas Observer, some reported tense run-ins with security and law enforcement.
“It didn’t go as well as the Tampa one,” Estopinal said of the Dallas evacuation. “It’s hard, sometimes, when people don’t see the storms coming, and it’s not raining yet. Obviously, you don’t want to be standing next to those huge stages when that wind goes through. That can be hard to explain to people.”
Locally, at least, fans know to expect it. Over the last 14 months, bad weather has had a major impact on at least three other outdoor festivals in Tampa Bay.
In June, a day-long concert headlined by the band Everclear at St. Petersburg’s Vinoy Park was cut short when high winds rattled the stage, sending musicians scurrying for cover.
In September, rain and lightning forced the evacuation of the Reggae Rise Up Festival, also at Raymond James Stadium. That show resumed after about an hour.
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And in March 2014, a nasty forecast prompted organizers of the Spring Beer Fling at Curtis Hixon Park to move their event from Saturday to Sunday, with only a couple days’ notice. At first, some fans called for a refund. “But come Saturday, everyone’s posting on our Facebook page, ‘Good call on that,'” said Ferdian Jap of organizers Big City Events.
For this Saturday’s Tampa Bay Margarita Festival, which could draw up to 11,500 to Curtis Hixon Park in Tampa, Big City Events will monitor the radar alongside city officials, who will ultimately decide whether to shut things down. Should heavy rains come, fans will evacuate into the covered walkway between the Tampa Museum of Art and the William F. Poe parking garage.
The bigger the event, the bigger deal it is when a major storm hits.
The Clearwater Jazz Holiday hasn’t had to cancel a performance due to weather in many years, said festival director Gary Hallas, but that doesn’t stop organizers from re-evaluating their evacuation policy every year.
“You’re always watching the weather to make sure it’s a safe environment,” he said.
It’s been more than 20 years since St. Petersburg’s Ribfest has had to cancel a show due to weather, said organizer Tom Whiteman. Still, after the 2011 Sugarland tragedy, Ribfest preemptively installed a wind meter, began anchoring the main stage with concrete ballasts and guy-wires, and cleared a new walkway and zone flags to give emergency personnel better access to injured patrons in the middle of the lawn.
“Because of the zone flags and the open walkways,” Whiteman said, “we are fairly confident we can get to a person in distress.”
Sunset may be the new kid on the block, but with an expected attendance of up to 60,000 over two days, it’s already one of Tampa Bay’s largest events. Estopinal, one of the country’s most prominent EDM promoters, calls Sunset’s rapid growth “unheard of” and “way bigger than I ever thought it could be.”
Considering the scope of the festival, said Tampa Sports Authority spokesman Bobby Silvest said, last year’s evacuation couldn’t have gone better.
“It’s the first time we actually had done that with an event of this magnitude in our lives,” he said. “We were happy, and also learned from that, and now have fine-tuned a plan that will be executed if there’s any threatening weather for this year and in future events.”
This year’s Sunset will feature by far its largest main stage yet, standing 60 feet tall and topped by a giant canopy. To ensure it doesn’t topple over, organizers are mooring it to the ground with gigantic concrete slabs. They’ll even have a staffer monitoring the radar around the clock — not just directly overhead, but all across Central Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico.
“Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have even had security,” Estopinal said. “To actually have an evacuation plan in place, we’ve come a long way.”
Contact Jay Cridlin at cridlin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8336. Follow @JayCridlin.
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