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Hackathons/Handbook/Emergencies

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Emergency Information

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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

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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.

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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Friendly Space Policies - Meta