Cancellation - Was it my fault?

[andy]

Saying i may have drowned is ridiculous because i'm fairly sure i have this thing called common sense which prevents people from doing foolish things such as oh i don't know, running in or through over flowing rivers!

I said 'if'. Sadly not everyone has common sense and people are often fairly quick to blame organisers when common sense is lost and accidents occur.. Which is why this kind of thing (cancellation) happens.

[Nathan.]

I understand that there were dangers on the day, i'm not saying the event should have gone ahead yesterday however i do feel it could have been planned in an area that would have less risk of flooding

[SeanC]

In a few years we'll all (yes even orienteers) have smartphones and constant access to emails ... which can produce an alert when a new email is delivered. So all organisers can use the same procedure for cancelling an event:

- log on to the entry system
- select the "cancel the event/send a message to all competitors" option
- enter the reason.
- press go.

Even now there are probably enough people with smartphones in each club to enable most people to get the message.

ideally the system could include email addresses of "other interested people" who aren't entered, eg helpers.

This would take the pressure of the organser to run around talking to webmasters and doing lots of different bits of communication. Presumably cancelling an event at short notice leads to lots of complicated new tasks.

Do any of the entries systems support this? If not how much would we be prepared to pay on our entry fees for the facility?

It's got to be justified for the really big events. Wasn't this an interland event so people were travelling from abroad?

Must be gutting for SOC to put in all that hard work and have to cancel.

[drobin]

however i do feel it could have been planned in an area that would have less risk of flooding

What like here?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/3538914/Venice-under-five-feet-of-water-as-the-city-suffers-its-worst-floods-in-22-years.html

[Gnitworp]

Wasn't this an interland event so people were travelling from abroad?

No, Sean, it was only an Interland team selection race

[Philip134]

One of my earliest events was a November Classic and the stream I crossed there was far deeper and faster flowing than anything yesterday.

Busketts Lawn 1977? My first attempt at being a planner!!

[Paul Frost]

This would take the pressure of the organser to run around talking to webmasters and doing lots of different bits of communication. Presumably cancelling an event at short notice leads to lots of complicated new tasks.

No running around needed, you just make sure that someone that will be at the event (computing/results team might be a good option) has the necessary access to the club website etc.

Do any of the entries systems support this? If not how much would we be prepared to pay on our entry fees for the facility?

SPORTident offer it it as part of their online entries package. They use it for some events to SMS results to competitors.

[King Penguin]

I understand that there were dangers on the day, i'm not saying the event should have gone ahead yesterday however i do feel it could have been planned in an area that would have less risk of flooding

The rain over Saturday night was intense. The main road in Brockenhurst was flooded on Sunday morning. I challenge you to find any stream in the entire New Forest which was not overflowing. Maybe Acres Down / Hart Hill would have been OK, but Highland Water certainly would not have been crossable. I very much doubt there would have been sufficient usable parking at Millyford Bridge. I remember 2 occasions on which parking at Burley was almost unusable.
Are you saying the November Classic should always and only be planned on the same watershed hilltops ? That would be very boring.

[obody]

Just to illustrate the severity of the decisions faced by the organising team:

http://www.grough.co.uk/magazine/2010/10/26/coroner-urges-proper-training-after-ten-tors-death-verdict

A 14-year-old girl died while training for the 10 Tors. She slipped and fell into a swollen brook, dying from heart failure due to drowning and hypothermia. Her mother sued her school for negligence and criminal proceedings were considered.

The idea that accidents can happen, even to those well prepared, equipped and quite probably in possession of common sense, is not ridiculous. Add in tiredness, hypothermia and a race situation...

While the circumstances may not have been identical, the organising team had an agonising decision weighing up risks and potential solutions and their decision must be respected. As for comms, let's all think about how our own clubs would have coped with the situation. Easy with hindsight.

[daffdy]

Lets bring some geography into the mix.

This summer was very, very wet. Consequently, groundwater levels are high and the soil is saturated. This means that rainfall gets to rivers much more quickly and flooding is more likely than usual. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20188065

On the day of the November Classic, the nearest publically available weather station recorded 25.9 mm of rain. That's not catastrophic, but it is still a lot for a 24 hour period (http://www.southamptonweather.co.uk/wxwuhistory.php)

Now lets see when the precipitation occured: (n.b. I picked up the graph yesterday, so ignore the 'last 24 hours' bit)

Source: http://www.southamptonweather.co.uk/

weather.png (63.3 KiB) Viewed 4901 times

I wasn't there because I was enjoying a really good NOR event (thanks hardy NOR people) so I can't comment on the minutiae of how it was cancelled. I'm sure there are some things future organisers can learn from this. But given the time the rain occured and its intensity, and allowing time for the rain to run off into whatever stream was the problem, I think this might explain why the decision was made late on.

[RJ]

WCOC had a very similar situation one November about fifteen years ago at a National event on Dalegarth. It rained very heavily during the night and even though things were improving on the morning, with eventually, bright skies and sunshine, the controller and planner looked carefully at parts of the area and decided to cancel.

It was a nightmare, with over a thousand competitors on the narrow roads into Eskdale at this stage.

The reason for the cancellation was that all the heavy rain during the night was now in all the lower parts of the terrain... the marshes. Some were two foot deep. Little time for the streams to carry the excess water away. It didn't look too bad because marshes hide the water rather well. The sensible decision on the day was to cancel.

The officials did not take the decision lightly.... but they understood their responsibility quite clearly.... the safety of the competitors comes first.

To all those who are moaning about the recent cancellation I would advise that you take a deep breath, have a rethink, reconsider, and thank heavens that we have the quality of people associated with the running of our events that are prepared to take those uncomfortable decisions, and put safety first!

If you can't see your way to changing your opinion then I hope you don't get given the responsibility of organising, planning or controlling an event in the future.

[awk]

Whereas the event was clearly not planned in a place where freak weather conditions, such as those we have in the UK, could be manageable to run in, the fact that it was so far away and cancelled on such short notice ruined many peoples plans for the weekend.

So, are you saying that only areas that aren't made inaccessible by freak weather conditions should be used? Because if you are, then one can quickly rule out a huge number of areas in the UK, including most of the best terrain that we have.
Freak (i.e. exceptional) weather conditions means that one has to put into place exceptional decisions - like, perhaps, cancelling.

Yes cbg, i could have gone for a cross country run, yet i had prepared to go for a orienteering race therefore the thought of a meander around some woods without any purpose seems a bit of waste, if i wanted to go for a cross country run, i could have stayed at home and gone on some of my usual routes, but the fact is that i didn't want to go on a cross country run, i was there to do orienteering.

What we want, and what we can get don't always match. It's part of life.

People gave up there weekends to go there but their plans were scuppered due to poor planning.

Gave up their weekends? Giving up implies that these people sacrificed something: but you were planning to do something you wanted to do for yourself - that's not giving up. It's the organisers who gave up their weekend, not you (and many will have been working at it all weekend and for days/weeks beforehand).

Saying i may have drowned is ridiculous because i'm fairly sure i have this thing called common sense which prevents people from doing foolish things

This sort of sense is remarkably uncommon.

such as oh i don't know, running in or through over flowing rivers!

So, how did you propose getting round the course then?

Yes it probably would have been a great race however there are other areas of the new forest that could have provided the same level of racing without such risk.

Do you know what the risk levels were? Do you know the risk levels of other areas available? Do you know the risk levels of other freak weather conditions? Do you know the availability of other appropriate areas given constraints on permissions (huge in the New Forest) and fixtures planning etc.?

[Nathan.]

No i am not saying it should have been planned on the same area, i understand that it was not the fault of the organiser or anybody involved in the planning that the weather turned and i am not trying to force blame on anyone. I was simply upset and annoyed abut the situation on sunday as it hurt my own and others chances of selection as now there is only one more as far as i know at the minute, any way, i apologise if i have offended or angered anyone in any way, i was simply expressing my views on the matter as many others have. So, again, i am sorry for any one i have offended or angered

[Nathan.]

CBG there is no need to personally nit picl through my posts, they are not directed at you personally so i don't think it is far that you are quoting and commenting on everything i put

[awk]

I was simply upset and annoyed abut the situation on sunday as it hurt my own and others chances of selection as now there is only one more as far as i know at the minuted

Hopefully, the selectors will come up with an alternative. Can understand and sympathise with the frustration and disappointment though.