Music festival precautions ramp up
The Coachella Valley will soon be swarming with music fans looking to have some fun in the sun during the three festival weekends at the Empire Polo Club in Indio.
The Indio Police Department said that they are focused on two things, safety and traffic flow.
“We have to run our city and then we essentially have to run a second city with 125,000 people coming in to Coachella. It is a city of its own,” said Chief Mike Washburn. “It’s actually larger than the city of Indio in terms of full-time residents.”
The department will enlist the help of 14 outside agencies, including the California Highway Patrol, Riverside Sheriff’s office, and all valley law enforcement offices.
“The FBI is always with us as well,” Washburn added.
Washburn said there are emergency plans and backup plans in place. There are also other protections, like the use of metal detector wands at the entrance, wristbands that control access ont he gorunds, and now, drones above in the skies.
“We’ll see how that works for us in terms of where the crowd’s congregated at. If it’s pushed to one side or the other,” Washburn said.
Jim Curtis, who is the Community Services Manager for the city of Indio and has worked on the festival for 15 years, said drones will also be used to provide a birds-eye view to traffic controllers on the ground.
“I think it will even help us more with traffic for communities if they can’t get there, ‘why is it happening, why is it stuck?’ Boom we can send a drone up and find out,” he said.
The drones are even more necessary with the growing popularity of traffic apps, like Waze, that reroute people in real time, creating a surge of cars in areas where traffic controllers do not expect them.
“Patience is key. You have to be patient. There’s going the traffic. These are country roads that we’re putting 125,000 people onto,” Curtis said. “It’s not a freeway around the Polo Grounds.”
This is the first year that the Jefferson Interchange will be completed. It is expected to help significantly, especially with post-festival traffic on Interstate 10.
