Emergency management getting ready for upcoming Cattle Country Music Festival

With just a week left to go before the inaugural Cattle Country Music Festival on April 12-14 in Gonzales, local emergency management officials have been getting ready for the influx of visitors the event is expected to bring to the area.

As many as 6,000 people or more a day could be at the festival site, Gonzales County Emergency Management Coordinator Jimmy Harless said.

First responders and law enforcement engaged in a tabletop exercise on Friday, March 21 — preparing for the possibility of a weather-related event that would either trigger a stay in place or a mass evacuation, depending on the type of weather, Harless said.

“Most of the time, if there is a thunderstorm we do a stop and if there is any cloud-to-ground lightning, we would do a shelter in place or in vehicles,” Harless said. “For tornados, I have a volunteer who is a friend of mine who just retired from Guadalupe County who is going to be my weather liaison person and be a direct contact between us and the National Weather Service.

“(Festival founder) Marcus (Federman) and his people have their own weather ops group, but on my side, our go to is the National Weather Service. Anything they give us with any kind of approaching storm, we will reconfirm with our federal friends. We have in place for updates about 80-mile range, 40-mile range, 20-mile range and so on.”

Harless said the person overseeing safety concerns for Cattle Country Music Festival is the same person who helped with Float Fest two years ago — a retired state police officer who has performed similar functions with Lollapalooza and other big name festivals and with whom Harless has been in weekly contact in the days leading up to Cattle Country.

Harless said the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office is loaning Gonzales County its 18-wheeler mobile command center to set up onsite at “The Boot,” the 400-acre ranch along the Guadalupe River where the festival will take place.

FirstNet — the First Responder Network Authority — will have a mobile tower present to allow first responders to stay connected so there are no phone issues. Phone service on traditional cell towers can slow down or become very spotty due to high demand at festival sites, so having FirstNet on site means first responder communications will not be dropped, Harless said.

For fire safety, there will be two fire apparatuses onsite at peak times when the music is playing, as well as an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) with a 60-gallon water tank. Firefighters will be on site at all times as well.

Harless said he plans to do an inspection on all tents the day before to “make sure that anything over a certain size has exit signs and all fire extinguishers are up to date.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety will have its mounted patrol on site with five horses.

“I don't know exactly when they're going to be on on site and off site, but they've acquired a place to stay and they're going to be there for visibility,” Harless said. “Plus, the horses are just beautiful. Hopefully some of the families are bringing the kids and that'll be an attractant but also a security measure on our side.”

Sheriff’s deputies and police officers will be working on duty, including traffic, plus DPS will also have a strike team on site as they did for Float Fest, “basically looking for traffic violations and showing the colors off site on the state road,” Harless said.

Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office, the Shiner Police Department and Lavaca EMS have all volunteered assets to help out and the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, or STRAC, which oversees emergency medical response in the region for the state, will have assets on standby that can be activated at the drop of a hat, Harless said. Plus there will be a fully equipped medical tent at the festival grounds, just as there was at Float Fest in 2022.

One of the neatest additions at the festival in the way of security is a weapons detection system that uses sonar to scan people coming into the grounds, Harless said.

“What it's doing is it's scanning you and if it it gets a return on the sonar that indicates you might have a weapon, it alerts,” Harless said. “They will have certified people who are going to run it. It’s pretty neat technology.

“That way, we're not searching everybody. They come through the system, kind of like at an airport. They come through the system and if it doesn’t alert, you're good, have a good time, that kind of thing, But if they come in and it alerts, we'll pull them aside and then check them to make sure there is nothing going on. We do a secondary search so we’re not inconveniencing everyone.”

Cattle Country’s lineup includes headliners Eric Church, Whiskey Myers and Koe Wetzel with support from more than 30-plus artists, including Chase Rice, Randy Rogers Band, Tanya Tucker, Shane Smith & The Saints, The Red Clay Strays, The War And Treaty, Colbie Caillat, Tracy Lawrence, Tyler Braden, William Clark Green and more, playing on three stages during the course of the three-day festival.