Emergency management ready for Float Fest 2022

Gonzales County Emergency Management director Jimmy Harless said the 2022 Float Fest, which will make its Gonzales debut later this month, could be the biggest event in terms of crowd size ever held in Gonzales County.

Harless is working with many different agencies — from law enforcement to medical personnel to fire and EMS first responders and others — to make sure public health and safety requirements at the festival won’t overwhelm their ability to serve full-time county residents in need.

“We need to get the folks in Gonzales County aware there will be quite a few people coming into the community,” Harless said. “We're looking at about 15,000 people (on the festival grounds) for that weekend. That’s about twice as many people as we usually see in Gonzales for Come and Take It.

“We need people to be aware that the traffic is going to be tremendously increased, so we need everybody to pay attention to that if they can. Every business is going to be busy, so people need to exercise patience and good judgment.”

Float Fest will be staged July 23-24 on the Guadalupe River at a 765-acre private ranch on County Road 197, just off US 183 south of the Gonzales city limits. Major activity at the site will actually begin the day before, on Friday, July 22, in what organizers call “load-in day” as the ranch opens up to those who will be camping on-site.

As many as 100 Float Fest employees will be working at the site for the entire month of July to put on what has been called one of the Top 50 music festivals in North America by a number of publications.

“Marcus Federman, the promoter, is a really good guy and he has put together a great team of folks to run that event,” Harless said.

Harless said Gonzales County has been holding regular planning sessions with Federman as well as with state, county and city first responders and other agencies to discuss what is needed and he is pleased with the contingencies that have been put in place.

“What we’ve done is bring in a lot of assets — state assets mainly, because the sheriff’s office and fire departments don’t have the manpower to do everything that is needed,” Harless said. “The Department of State Health Services is helping us and highway patrol (DPS) is going to have an increased presence in the county for the weekend; I think they call it their task force.

“Guadalupe County’s Emergency Management folks are also coming in because that’s where Float Fest was previously held and I’m good friends with many of them since I live in Seguin. We’re also going to have a beefed up presence of game wardens because of the river aspect of the Float Fest.”

Harless said a donation by Federman and Float Fest is funding the presence of TEXSAR — Texas Search and Rescue’s mounted search team. Harless said the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization has a great deal of assets that would be beneficial in case of emergency.

On the medical side, Harless said Gonzales Healthcare Systems was especially concerned about “protecting the hospital’s ability to operate in case something were to happen — a mass casualty event.”

“STRAC, the South Texas Regional Advisory Council, is bringing in what they call a MMU, or mobile medical unit,” Harless said. “It's a big trailer that opens up and expands to increase capacity. The last thing we had decided was they were going to set up at the hospital to kind of supplement and take that strain off the emergency room.”

Harless said PHI Air Medical, which provides air ambulance services in Gonzales County, will have a helicopter assigned to Gonzales County on-site that will either be housed at the festival grounds or at the JB Wells Park, Arena and Expo, which is where the county will have a command center for the weekend of the festival.

“The city has graciously granted us permission to use most of JB Wells on the north side toward the river, so you'll see a tremendous presence there,” Harless said.

Federman and his staff have also contracted with Ascension Seton Medical Center out of Austin to have a “level I trauma doctor” on site, Harless said.

“They will have top medical folks at this facility in the event they need to handle dehydration and respiratory issues,” he added.

Meanwhile, AT&T is also chipping in with a piece of equipment called a COW, or “cell on wheels” after a request was made by local authorities.

“First responders have what we call FirstNet (a high-speed, nationwide wireless broadband network dedicated to public safety and first responders) in case something major were to happen with the communications system and we couldn’t use it,” Harless said. “AT&T is bringing in their mobile unit and they are going to set it up at JB Wells so we can utilize communications separate from what the towers at the event would control. They used a very similar piece of equipment in Uvalde because the towers were inundated there after the mass shooting.”

Also, emergency responders are expected to take part in a mass casualty tabletop exercise to simulate possible events that could occur and how to respond to them to be better prepared for the festival, Harless said.

“I'm kind of excited about Float Fest,” he said. “You know, of course, in the job that I do, it’s always my job to worry about the bad things and to be prepared, but to also hope for the best. And so I'm kind of excited about this event coming to Gonzales County.”