Hackathons/Handbook/Emergencies

Emergency Information

Make sure people know how to get help when something goes wrong! Pre-planning in this area is very important, and will save a lot of time, stress, and effort, in the event of an emergency.

Resource

Event organizers should go through and refer to Keeping events safe, which has key guidance for before, during, and after events.

See also the Keeping events safe resource kit.

Recommended Pre-plans

• Publish a list of local emergency phone numbers on the event wikipage, and also distribute it to all event organizers.
• Provide info about the nearest hospital - contact info, directions, and information on how they would deal with international patients.
• Choose an emergency contact number, that will be given to all event attendees.
  • The number should be a local number that will be monitored 24 hours by a local organizer, or rotating shift of local organizers.
  • Event attendees can call this number if they become ill, have legal trouble, there is a sexual assault, they are lost in the city, etc.
• Pre-plan how the organizers and attendees should respond in various situations:
  • Does your area have high probability for natural disasters? You should publish what to do in case of the event (examples: earthquake, flood, tsunami, hurricane).
  • Fire at the event.
  • Terrorist related event nearby.
  • Violence, a fight, or harassment taking place at the event.
• Have all participants agree during registration to the Friendly Space Policy and Code of Conduct.
• How will you communicate with your participants in the case of a larger-scale emergency (Telegram? IRC? email?)
• You might consider assigning someone the role of "safety." Their job will be to think about the event from a risk management perspective.

Examples of emergencies from previous events

• Participants needed to be taken to the hospital
• Participants needed onsite doctors visits
• Fire alarms in the middle of sessions
• Fire alarms in the middle of the night

Specifics

• Post safety information for participants. Example: Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/emergency
• Emergency phone number should be posted on the event page and emailed to participants
• Every single participant agree in advance to the Friendly Space Policy and Code of Conduct
• Have radios for organizers to find each-other and communicate easily
• Have multiple types of insurance covering the event, know what types of insurance your venue has, different countries may have different legal requirements
• Don't allow people who are not registered into the events or social events without approval from organizers 
• Require the venue to provide an emergency plan / information. If they don't have one created they should create one for your event.
• Have an evacuation plan and announce it to participants during the event opening. Where are the exits? Where should people go?

Also See

Friendly Space Policies - Meta