Fire department plays larger role in the city's many festivals and events

A year-round festival calendar, concerts, and visits from national presidential candidates all have attracted big crowds to Beaufort, and with those crowds comes the potential for a tragic situation -- a situation that the Beaufort Fire Department hopes to prevent.

"Our events are getting bigger ... and we can't continue to do things the way we always did," said Lt. Dan Byrne,the city's fire marshal. "We're having these large events with no evacuation plan, no emergency training, no coordination, and you just can't do that."

The fire department started a program this year in which the department's fire inspectors met with organizers of events such as the Beaufort Water and Shrimp festivals to ensure that the wildly popular events go off smoothly, safely and in compliance with the city's fire code.

Helping organizers plan evacuation routes, deal with noncompliant vendors and work on issues related to crowding has become a priority for the fire department's inspectors, said Sammy Negron,assistant fire marshal.

"We quickly found that these events were being held for many years, and we really didn't have anything in place, as far as an emergency plan for the event," he said.

Negron cited this year's Water Festival as an example of how event planners can work with authorities to plan and execute a safe and successful event.

"Last year, we developed the plan with the organizers and told them, 'OK, these are the things that need to be addressed that are a concern to us as a fire department,' and they complied with everything," he said, citing evacuation routes and crowding as some of the initial concerns.

As part of the city's permitting process, organizers of events with an expected attendance of more than 200 people must review their safety plans with the fire marshals.

Byrne said that an inspector will attend the event to conduct some minor spot inspections to ensure compliance.

In addition to protecting the thousands of people who attend Beaufort's festivals and events annually, Negron said proper emergency planning can protect organizers from a significant amount of liability in the event of an emergency or accident.

"There's a liability on the organizers, there's a liability on the city of Beaufort, and there's a liability on us as a fire department, because an event was being held in our jurisdiction, we knew about it and we had nothing in place to regulate it," he said. "We'll all be on the same side of the courtroom."

Since the program began last year, the fire department has yet to cite any event for violating the fire code.

Byrne said penalties for fire-code violations range from a citation to arrest, depending on the severity of the violation.