The Event Safety Podcast

Danielle Hernandez is joined by guest co-host Fr. David Garretson along with guests Bill Conner and Dan Culhane for an in-depth discussion of the present, past and future of fire safety curtains and their place in both venues and codes.  

For over a century, theaters have been required to provide either a fire curtain, a deluge system, or mechanical exhaust at the proscenium to separate the stage from the auditorium in the event of a fire. The forthcoming International Building Code (2027) will eliminate the longstanding requirement for proscenium opening protection in new theater construction.  Bill Conner, who worked this significant change through both IBC and parallel NFPA language, has found no evidence anywhere, including the UK and Europe, that fire curtains have ever saved a human life. 

Note: This change applies to new construction only. Removing an existing fire curtain from an older theater would require buy-in from the local authority having jurisdiction, the insurer, and the fire marshal. NFPA is moving in the same direction, though without IBC's requirement to separate the stage and auditorium from the rest of the building.

 

Hosts:

Danielle Hernandez (host)

Fr. David Garretson (guest co-host)

Guests:

Bill Conner, FASTC, ETCP Certified (retired) Rigger - Theatre. Bill, a professional theatre consultant since 1982, provides facility planning and systems design for the performing arts. Among over 150 projects, notable projects include the Alley Theatre, the West Side Showroom, Cincinnati’s SCPA, Edgewood College’s The Stream, Willow Creek Church, Detroit Orchestra Hall, McFarland High School, and the Holden-Brownstone Performing Arts Center. Bill is the ASTC codes officer since 1987 and participates in the development of the national model codes as the senior member of the Assembly Occupancies committee for the NFPA Life Safety Code, serving since 1988, and participant in the ICC Code Development Process for many years. He is a member of the ICC A117.1 and ICC 300 committees. You can reach Bill at 708-983-5792 or bill@bcaworld.com

Dan Culhane | Co-Chair, Stage Machinery Working Group and Technical Standards Council, ESTA

Show Notes:

ESTA Standards (free downloads)

ANSI E1.22

Deadliest single building or complex fires and explosions in the U.S.

Iroquois Theatre fire

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Contact Danielle | podcast@eventsafetyalliance.org

Co-host Anna Glover joins Danielle Hernandez to explore a topic that sits at the heart of everything we do in live events: how do you make good decisions when you can't know the outcome?

Their guest, Ben Cattaneo, is a risk and resilience professional, host of the Decision-Making Studio podcast, and co-author of "Decision Making in the Polycrisis Era". Ben opens by drawing a clear line between risk (where we can estimate probability) and uncertainty (where we genuinely can't) and argues that leaning into uncertainty as a frame produces better thinking than treating every scenario as a quantifiable risk. Risk matrices can create a false sense of security.  

Using a FOCUS framework to help guide decision making, the discussion explores the process and tools available to make a decision, including knowing how impactful the result may be to live with, i.e., a hat (fully reversible), a haircut (you'll live with it for a while), or a tattoo (irreversible).

What happens when the moment arrives and people get cold feet about the decision they already agreed to make? The answer, Ben says: document the how and the why before the pressure hits, so you can defend a difficult decision without having to reconstruct your reasoning under stress.

The episode closes with Anna and Ben connecting all of it back to live events as an environment for building decision-making capability. Every show is a new data point, every load-in a chance to practice.

Hosts:

Danielle Hernandez (host)

Anna Glover (co-host)

Guests:

Ben Cattaneo | Risk and Resilience Practice, PwC; Host, Decision Making Studio Podcast

Show Notes:

Decision Making Studio Podcast | https://thedecisionmaking.studio

Decision Making in the Polycrisis Era (book) | Available on major book retailers

FOCUS Decision-making Primer | https://thedecisionmaking.studio/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/FOCUS.pdf

ESA Safer Events Series - Weather | https://eventsafetyalliance.org/safer-events-series

Contact Danielle | podcast@eventsafetyalliance.org

Episode 116: Survey Says... Weather with DTN!

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Weather is the leading disruptor of live events, and the industry's relationship with weather intelligence has matured significantly over the past decade. Danielle Hernandez and co-host Tami Richter sit down with Renny Vandewege, General Manager of Weather Intelligence at DTN, to dig into the results of a major industry survey DTN conducted on how event organizers are making weather-related decisions.

Renny walks through DTN's approach, explaining how they've evolved from pure forecasting into what they call an operational decisioning platform. The conversation covers range rings, event-specific trigger thresholds, high-precision lightning and radar data, wet bulb globe temperature for heat safety, and the critical value of having a meteorologist in the loop. A static range ring only triggers after a lightning strike has occurred. A meteorologist can warn you before the first strike happens.

The survey findings are illuminating. Most event weather decisions are made within 48 hours of the event, often in the moment, and decision makers frequently struggle to translate forecast data into action alone.   

The industry has come a long way, but that the work is not finished and DTN's survey helps show the way forward.

Hosts:

Danielle Hernandez (host)   Tami Richter (co-host)

Guest:

Renny Vandewege | General Manager of Weather Intelligence, DTN 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/renny-vandewege-8b0aa735/

Show Notes:

DTN Outdoor Safety | https://www.dtn.com

https://www.dtn.com/weather-risks-in-event-operations/

https://training.fema.gov/nims/

ESA Safer Events Series - Weather | https://eventsafetyalliance.org/safer-events-series

Contact Danielle | podcast@eventsafetyalliance.org

Episode 116: Survey Says... Weather with DTN!

----------------------------------------

Weather is the leading disruptor of live events, and the industry's relationship with weather intelligence has matured significantly over the past decade. Danielle Hernandez and co-host Tami Richter sit down with Renny Vandewege, General Manager of Weather Intelligence at DTN, to dig into the results of a major industry survey DTN conducted on how event organizers are making weather-related decisions.

Renny walks through DTN's approach, explaining how they've evolved from pure forecasting into what they call an operational decisioning platform. The conversation covers range rings, event-specific trigger thresholds, high-precision lightning and radar data, wet bulb globe temperature for heat safety, and the critical value of having a meteorologist in the loop. A static range ring only triggers after a lightning strike has occurred. A meteorologist can warn you before the first strike happens.

The survey findings are illuminating. Most event weather decisions are made within 48 hours of the event, often in the moment, and decision makers frequently struggle to translate forecast data into action alone.   

The industry has come a long way, but that the work is not finished and DTN's survey helps show the way forward.

Hosts:

Danielle Hernandez (host)   Tami Richter (co-host)

Guest:

Renny Vandewege | General Manager of Weather Intelligence, DTN 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/renny-vandewege-8b0aa735/

Show Notes:

DTN Outdoor Safety | https://www.dtn.com

https://www.dtn.com/weather-risks-in-event-operations/

https://training.fema.gov/nims/

ESA Safer Events Series - Weather | https://eventsafetyalliance.org/safer-events-series

Contact Danielle | podcast@eventsafetyalliance.org

Episode 115: The Training Pod

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Phil van Hest and Sean Fox of Rock Force join Danielle and Bryan to tackle a question that many organizations eventually face: where do you start when you're building a crew training program from scratch?

 

Using a hypothetical production company as a framework, the conversation works through the foundational decisions every training program requires, beginning with logistics and goals and moving quickly into substance. Phil walks through fall protection as a practical example for any crew working at height, explaining the four tiers of the fall pro world, why ANSI standards often offer clearer guidance for entertainment than OSHA in most live event crew training situations, and how PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) should be baked into any program from day one as a living document. The discussion covers training records and certification tracking, lead-to-crew ratios, minimum standards for non-rigging crew, PPE orientation, duty of care, and the hierarchy of controls as a practical framework for teaching people what they are not authorized to do.

 

Co-host Brian Huneycutt steps in and his question about psychological safety brings the conversation into focus. Phil and Sean make the case that safety culture is the real curriculum underneath all the technical content. Leads need to know their crew by name. New people need permission to say they don't know something. Safety officers need to understand both where their authority starts and where it ends. And every person on a job site needs to understand that in an industry as small and visible as live entertainment, unsafe behavior has ripple effects far beyond the one load-in where it happens.

 

For anyone starting from zero, Phil's bottom line is clear: PPE training is part of compliance and gets safety onto people's bodies and into their behavior from the start. Pair that with an explicit safety culture message on day one, and you're already ahead of where most companies begin.

 

Hosts:

Danielle Hernandez (host)

Brian Huneycutt (co-host)

 

Guests:

Phil van Hest | Senior Director of National Safety, Rock Force

Sean Fox | Rock Force

https://www.rockforce.com/services#safety-heading

 

Show Notes:

ANSI Z359.1 & Z359.2 (Fall Protection Standards) | https://webstore.ansi.org

ANSI Z490 (Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health and Environmental Training) | https://webstore.ansi.org

https://tsp.esta.org/tsp/index.html

PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) | Search online for PDCA infographic

https://eventsafetyalliance.org/safer-events-series    Weather Preparedness

Contact Danielle | podcast@eventsafetyalliance.org