Pre­dictably, re­ports of a mur­der and oth­er in­ci­dents at Sat­ur­day's Point Fortin Bor­ough Day J'Ou­vert have led to calls for the event to be dis­con­tin­ued.Dwayne Jack­son, a bar bounc­er, was shot in the eye dur­ing a scuf­fle at the crowd­ed Frisco Junc­tion as thou­sands of rev­ellers par­tic­i­pat­ed in one of the biggest street par­ties out­side of Car­ni­val.

How­ev­er, shut­ting down an event that has done so much to boost do­mes­tic tourism in that south­ern dis­trict will not solve a prob­lem which is not lim­it­ed to Point Fortin, or even to Car­ni­val-in­spired gath­er­ings. The re­al is­sue is the lack of prop­er plan­ning and man­age­ment of pub­lic events in­volv­ing large crowds gath­er­ing in one place.Just two years ago (Ju­ly 3, 2011), there was the tragedy when a pirogue packed with peo­ple head­ing to the Red Bull Flug­tag at Ch­aguara­mas cap­sized, caus­ing deaths and in­juries.

The Flug­tag al­so trig­gered one of the worst traf­fic grid­locks ever ex­pe­ri­enced in this coun­try, ex­tend­ing from the venue at Williams Bay as far as the Beetham High­way as thou­sands of peo­ple at­tempt­ed to con­verge on the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la for that sin­gle event.Al­so, for more decades than most care to count, Car­ni­val has re­sult­ed in con­ges­tion and un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dents of all kinds, par­tic­u­lar­ly in and around Port-of-Spain, where the main events take place.

Yet no lessons seem to have been learnt from these ex­pe­ri­ences.Apart from the usu­al fin­ger-point­ing and re­gret in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math, no re­al ef­fort is made to un­der­stand what went wrong and why.Event plan­ners, as well as safe­ty and law-en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties, should be well aware of the po­ten­tial for big gath­er­ings of peo­ple to trig­ger dan­ger.

The con­se­quences, such as in­jury or death, loss of rev­enue, com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments, in­sur­ance costs and pos­si­ble pros­e­cu­tion, are why those re­spon­si­ble, at all lev­els, must pay care­ful at­ten­tion when plan­ning for and man­ag­ing these mas­sive events.Sat­ur­day's un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dents sug­gest that safe­ty man­age­ment sys­tems for the street pa­rade were ei­ther ab­sent or in­ad­e­quate.

As im­por­tant as mu­sic, cos­tumes, food and re­fresh­ments are to the suc­cess of these fes­tiv­i­ties, of equal im­por­tance is en­sur­ing there are mon­i­tors and con­trols to safe­guard against risks.Or­gan­is­ers must work close­ly with po­lice and fire of­fi­cials to de­vel­op ap­pro­pri­ate safe­ty plans well in ad­vance and en­sure that those who live or work in the area and who are not par­tic­i­pat­ing will be in­con­ve­nienced ei­ther not at all or as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.

The costs and ef­fort in­volved in plan­ning, or­gan­is­ing and con­trol­ling will en­sure that event plan­ners and their sup­port­ing per­son­nel are able to an­tic­i­pate po­ten­tial sources of dan­ger, take steps to pre­vent trou­ble and are able to re­spond quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, if nec­es­sary. This is one area in which time, ef­fort and mon­ey should not be spared, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause the costs in the af­ter­math of a tragedy can be con­sid­er­ably greater.

In­stead of cur­tail­ing the rev­el­ry in mass gath­er­ings that are part of T&T's cul­ture, all stake­hold­ers need to go back to the draw­ing board to de­vel­op poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for suc­cess­ful and safe events.