Heat Safety at Events Starts Before Someone Gets Sick
This is about what I hear for heat safety at events:
Drink water.
Apply sunscreen.
Seek shade.
Good stuff!
Unless you’re the person planning the event.
If you are the event planner, heat safety needs to extend well beyond asking attendees to take care of themselves. Preventing heat illness isn’t just about telling people what to do when they’re already outside in the heat. It’s about planning ahead so that attendees don’t get sick in the first place.
Look at the whole environment
Heat safety is more complicated than just checking the temperature on a weather app.
How hot does it feel to be there? Is the event outdoors in direct sunlight? Are there shaded areas? Is it humid? Are people standing on asphalt? Will attendees be walking long distances? Does dancing or another activity factor in? Is someone exerting themselves physically? Is there anywhere nearby to escape to an air-conditioned building? How long will people be outside? When during the day is your event happening? What will weather conditions be like for staff members who might be outside setting up hours before anyone else arrives?
All of those variables factor into how hot it actually is to be there.
It strikes me as something one might expect, but I’m not sure event planners always consider the weather thoroughly enough. The temperature someone experiences at your event isn’t what’s forecast. It’s based on all those questions, and then some.
Make water accessible
So your safety plan for heat is “make sure people can buy water from a vendor.” Okay. Let me stop you.
If you’re seriously expecting that to be enough, please rethink that plan.
Make water truly accessible. Consider:
How many people are attending your event? How far do they need to walk to get water? Are there long lines? Can they refill their own water bottles? Do people know where the water station is? If your staff and volunteers need water too (they do), can they grab it without leaving their posts? What if a water station runs out? Do you have enough water on hand to supply your event for the conditions you’re expecting?
If you’re wondering about accessibility, you’re already thinking about this. For clarification: having one water station at the back of your event space doesn’t automatically mean it’s accessible for everyone who may need it.
Provide shade
Having shaded areas isn’t just an attendee perk. If your event is in a large parking lot, field, street, or any other place where attendees may be out in the direct sun for long periods of time, shade is part of your heat safety planning.
Where can someone sit and cool down if they need to? This could mean tents, trees, covered seating, indoor spaces, cooling stations, misting areas, or even somewhere as simple as a clearly marked area to take a break, get out of the sun, drink some water, and recover. Bonus points if you make sure staff and volunteers have access to these areas too. They should not wait until they feel sick to take a break.
Don’t forget your staff/volunteers
This doubles for people working the event. It can be easy to focus on making sure attendees are safe and forget that your entire event staff is going to be exposed to that same environment.
And often for longer amounts of time.
Think of every person that will be outside during your event. Venue setup teams might arrive multiple hours before the event starts. Security staff may be standing in one place in full sunlight. Vendors may be inside hot tents all day. Performers may be dancing around. Volunteers may feel like they can’t leave their post to take a break.
Yes, even your medical staff can become dehydrated.
Nobody gets cool points for suffering heat exhaustion because they really cared about their volunteer job.
Allow for breaks.
Have accessible water available specifically for staff.
Rotate people through when possible.
Tell people it’s okay to say “I need to cool down.”
Know who they should notify if they start feeling sick.
Watch for early signs of heat illness
Heat illness can start with:
Heavy sweating
Headache
Dizziness
Weakness
Nausea
Muscle cramps
Thirst
Irritability
Or they might just tell you that they feel really bad.
That’s your opportunity to prevent heat-related illness from progressing. Get the person to a cooler location. Have them stop moving around. Loosen/remove extra layers of clothing. Initiate active cooling. If they’re alert, able to swallow appropriately, and experiencing mild symptoms, encourage them to take small sips of a fluid.
And then watch them. Don’t send them back into the crowd minutes after nearly fainting because they drank ½ a water bottle and say they’re “fine.”
Confusion. LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Seizure.
If someone has any of these symptoms as a result of being in the heat, call 911. Heat stroke is a medical emergency. Start cooling the person while you wait for EMS to arrive. OSHA notes in its first-aid recommendations that heat illnesses can have overlapping symptoms. You don’t need to “know” someone has heat stroke before providing care. Treat people based on the symptoms you see.
Don’t forget meds/disabilities/underlying health conditions
Not everyone will respond to heat and hot weather the same way.
Some medications can impact how your body handles heat. So can some medical conditions. Know that older adults, young children, pregnant people, folks with heart conditions (or other chronic illnesses) and attendees taking certain medications may have increased risk. Each of these populations are capable of attending your event, loving every minute of it, and still requiring additional considerations when it comes to heat.
Accessibility also comes into play.
Can an attendee using a mobility device access the cooling area? Is there seating? Do they have to stand in long water lines? Can someone who is extremely heat intolerant leave the event and come back in if they need to cool down? Is there an accessible indoor or shaded area at your event? Will security allow someone to bring through medically necessary water or cooling supplies?
Tell your team about any unique considerations you know about beforehand. Remember heat may not always present as a disability.
Accessibility and medical planning go hand in hand.
Designate an area for people to recover
Not everyone who feels overheated needs an ambulance ride.
Many people will simply need to pause what they’re doing, move to a cooler location, hydrate if appropriate, and be monitored until they feel better. However you want to designate it. that somewhere exists. If you’d rather not handle heat-related illnesses at your event, that’s fine! Leave that part to your local EMS.
But if your plan is to make someone sit in the medical tent until they feel better…
How are you going to fit X amount of people in your medical tent until they recover? Where are volunteers going to watch them? Where will you keep cots if you brought them? If your plan is to provide first aid and release someone to continue enjoying the event, where will they go while they recover? Consider coordination with Community Care Areas if that’s a resource available to you.
Plan for your breaking points in advance
Here’s a general rule I love for safety planning:
Don’t wait until you’re in the middle of an emergency to decide what an emergency is.
Someone should be monitoring the weather ahead of time. Know ahead of time what you’ll do if there’s a heat advisory or warning issued. Will activities be modified? Can anyone refuse to work if they’re uncomfortable with the weather conditions? At what point will you need more water? Shade? Cooling supplies? Staff? Medical resources? Who makes the call if someone wants to cancel or pause an activity due to weather?
Decide it now. Tell people your plan.
Heat safety starts with event design
Sure, individuals are responsible for their own well-being.
They should drink water, take breaks, be mindful of their surroundings, dress for the weather, and bring their own supplies. Sunscreen, water bottles, medications, snacks.
But you can’t put the onus for heat safety solely on your attendees and then create an event where it’s difficult for them to follow those recommendations. If water is hard to access, they probably won’t drink enough. If there’s nowhere for people to sit down, they’ll continue to stand in the heat. If there’s no shelter from the sun, they can’t just snap their own shade into existence. If your staff are worried about leaving their posts, they may hesitate to take care of themselves. If no one at the event knows what to do when someone becomes sick, it will take longer to initiate a proper response.
Heat safety should be baked into your event design.
Create an environment where the safe choice is also the easy choice.
That’s the kind of safety planning we’re fans of at EQUIP Medical. We love showing up to events and never having to use our medical tents. But we also know that’s not realistic. We want to be there WHEN you need us. But a better solution? Designing events where fewer people need us.
This resource is for general education and does not replace individualized medical advice, emergency medical services, venue-specific emergency planning, or professional medical coverage.
