Volume 1, No. 22. November 30, 2001
Emergency invacuation
As parks revisit their emergency
response plans for next season, and keep the ramifications of September 11 firmly
in mind, they would do well to heed the lessons learned by Waterworld Safari
in Phoenix, Arizona, on opening day last season.
In the minutes before the gates opened as General Manager Franceen Gonzales
was overseeing final preparations, a member of the catering service, whose facilities
sit at the back of the park, ran up with disturbing news: a man wearing camouflage
and carrying a rifle had been spotted crouching in the bushes behind the park.
"I got on the radio and called for radio silence and said 'We believe there
is somebody armed outside the park,'" she said. Their emergency response plan
went into effect. Local authorities were notified, department managers moved
employees into shelters and radios remained silent except for one person broadcasting
commands.
Then the situation worsened. Five armed and camouflaged men had now been spotted
in the desert shrubs. Tobin Leslie, the facility manager, observing from one
of the waterslide towers, saw the five stealing around the park's perimeter
toward the front gate, where hundreds of guests were already lined up to enter
the park. "So we now have to make a decision: do we let the guests in?" Gonzales
said. She did. "The last thing I need is a bunch of sitting ducks up against
our fence."
As the gates opened staff told guests the front section of the park was not
ready for use and shepherded everybody to the back of the park, where lifeguards
had quickly been dispatched to staff the wave pool. "The difficulty was trying
to get guests into the park without alarming them," Gonzales said. "Once there's
an alarm they may not be as cooperative."
Leslie, meanwhile, was now getting a closer look at the besiegers and noticed
one of the camouflaged men carrying a pouch full of paintballs. "When we heard
over the radio that they were playing paintball, there was such a wave of relief,"
Gonzales said. Leslie apprehended the teen-age paintballers and gave them a
stern lecture, and when the police arrived the teens received an even sterner
lecture. "(The police) gave them a good scare and we haven't seen them since,"
Gonzales said.
For Gonzales, this was the first time she had to make quick emergency response
decisions involving large numbers of people, both employees and guests. Though
the bulk of the emergency response plan worked, Gonzales realized it needed
some tweaking, especially in the method of handling guests. "We had addressed
getting guests out of the park in the event of an emergency, not getting them
into the park. That was a new twist."