Health Protection staff play key role in safety for Pemberton Music Festival attendees
With the recent 2014 Pemberton Music Festival now in their rear-view mirror, Health Protection staff in VCH’s Sea to Sky offices only have a short time to take a breath before further mass gatherings hit the STS Corridor.
Sometimes people don’t realize how much behind-the-scenes work by VCH staff goes into ensuring these events are safe for the thousands of people who attend. Our Health Protection staff were involved with planning and inspecting this year’s festival since last summer when the event was first announced.
This involvement started many months ago when VCH Public Health Engineer, Michael Wu, and the Drinking Water Officer reviewed submissions and issued Construction and Operating Permits for extending the Village of Pemberton’s water system and for a temporary water system for the event.
Leading up to the festival, Environmental Health staff worked with the food and beverage managers to ensure food safety requirements were met by:
- reviewing food safety management plans
- issuing approvals/permits for the participating food and beverage vendors and Farmer’s Market
- reviewing sanitation and maintenance plans for disposing of liquid and solid wastes, sanitary facilities and water bottle filling stations
- approving emergency response and contingency plans for food, drinking water, communicable disease control and sanitation
This important work continued into the event itself, with site inspections of the water system and every food vendor being done prior to, and during, the festival. As well, the Drinking Water Officer monitored chlorine residuals in the distribution system and reviewed daily water quality reports to ensure the water was safe and clean.
Next up for this team? The upcoming Squamish Valley Music Festival, an event expected to attract more than 35,000 attendees per day to the Squamish area from August 8 – 10, followed by the Whistler Cranworkx event, a mountain biking extravaganza from August 8 – 17.