Entertainment Experts to Talk Safety and Insurance at Upcoming Event Safety Summit

Hundreds of live event professionals have registered to attend the first-ever summit focused solely on producing safer live eventsthat will take place from December 2-4, 2014 in Lititz, Pennsylvania.  

John Barylick, acclaimed attorney and author of Killer Show, to make keynote presentation. 

If the world has learned anything from the tragedies of the Boston Marathon, the Station Club Fire, the Indiana State Fair stage collapse, the Republica Cromanon nightclub fire in Argentina, and countless other incidents like them, it is that there can be no excuse for not having a well thought out event safety plan in place for every single live event produced anywhere around the world. 

And that plan, according to Take1 Entertainment Insurance Executive Vice President & Program Director Scott Carroll, must include a thorough review by the event producer’s insurance provider.  “The events of the past three years have had an enormous impact on the way insurance companies approach covering live events,” Carroll said today.  “We live in a totally different world than the one we lived in a few short years ago.  The level of scrutiny has increased significantly.  The requirements of coverage have become more demanding, and insurers are requiring more information around issues related to event safety.”

Scott Carroll, together with Susan McGuirl, Senior Underwriting Director at Fireman’s Fund, will lead a special panel entitled “Ensuring the Insurance Partnership” on Thursday December 4th at the Tait Towers campus in Lititz, Pennsylvania.  The panel will focus heavily on explaining how the strategies of underwriting have evolved; understanding the importance of collaboration and partnership between the producer and the insurance provider when evaluating live event risks from the insurance carrier perspective; knowing the various resources that are now available to help producers of live events assess risk, evaluate the aspects of each event that are most likely to cause loss, and resolve pre-loss and post-loss issues; and discussing, in general, how to be better prepared to predict, plan for, and mitigate the next tragedy — hopefully keeping it from ever happening.

Amplifying the importance of learning from past tragedies, Event Safety Alliance Executive Director Jim Digby today announced that acclaimed author and attorney John Barylick will deliver the keynote presentation at the summit. Barylick is the author of Killer Show, a gripping and meticulously-researched account of the conditions and decisions that led to the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in Rhode Island. Using video from the incident itself, computer reconstructions and burn tests, Barylick will explain the many missteps that resulted in the fourth-deadliest club fire in U.S. history, which claimed 100 lives and injured hundreds more. By examining this tragedy in detail, the ESA hopes to underscore the deadly seriousness of our task as event professionals, and help ensure that nothing like it ever happens again. 

The first-of-its-kind three-day Event Safety Summit symposium and hands-on workshop is designed to increase awareness of the many event safety risks present at live events, and teach event producers to address those risks more effectively.  A complete Event Safety Summit 2014 schedule can be found at Event Safety Alliance web site: www.eventsafetyalliance.org.