Alchemy 2020 Decision Factors
What are the factors that have to line up for Alchemy 2020 to be held safely? The EC identified these 10 factors as the primary ones to consider.
First and foremost, our primary factor is “Can we safely hold our burn without creating a risk to the health and lives of our community and the local area?” The answer to this is NO. All of the leaders we talked to agreed, we cannot safely hold a burn. We cannot, in good conscience, ask anyone to volunteer and put themselves at risk.
The other factors are:
Can we get a permit from Chattahoochee Hills for our event? We haven’t gotten an answer on this yet, as the city office was closed for a while and the city was not issuing any permits at that time.
Are there any city, county, or state restrictions on large gatherings, or requirements that we cannot meet? At this time we don’t know if there will be any restrictions in October. It is possible that the city or county will limit gatherings if there is a moderate to severe risk of community transmission of the Coronavirus.
Can we get a medical team to support our event? We have real doubts about being able to fill our medical staffing needs. We haven’t been able to get feedback from the medical firms we’ve reached out to over the last 2 months, because they are too busy dealing with the pandemic. We expect we will see expanded requirements for medical overage. Even if no outside agency changed their requirement, common sense would tell us we would need more medical support and more supplies for them. Given the burden on the medical field at this time, we don’t think we should consider pulling any professionals off the lines to assist us, even if we could find a firm that could supply a full team.
What is the guidance from public health organizations? This is important. Guidance from the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, as well as the World Health Organization and Georgia Department of Health, gives us the best information on what needs to be done to prevent the spread of SARS-Cov-2, which causes the COvid-19 illness. The CDC provides guidance for large events (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/mass-gatherings-ready-for-covid-19.html), much of which is based on the level of community transmission.
We also looked at guidance from private organizations that work in fields relevant to a burn. These include the American Camp Association (representing a huge number of summer camps in the US) and the Event Safety Alliance (which promotes safety in entertainment production).
What we found in all of this is guidance suggesting we do not have the resources to take all the steps necessary to have a safe event, even if community transmission rates are in the very low category. If we cannot hold the burn safely, without avoidable hazards to all involved, then we will not hold the event.
Will we have a land contract, and will it be safe to use the land? The land manager for our site was open to our request for the dates we need, but didn’t make any guarantees about future changes to that availability. They have cancelled the horse shows that would normally happen there, which gives us an indication that large gatherings are not safe.
Can we secure an effective insurance policy? This is a major issue for us, and one that we think would have become a show stopper at some point this year. We have inquiries out to our insurance company, so we don’t yet know if they would issue us a policy. We do know that any policy they issue would not cover any costs associated with cancellation or injury from the coronavirus, since there has been a clause to that effect in past policies. The insurance industry changed their standard coverage back in the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.
What is the level of Coronavirus community transmission in the Southeast? We have to consider the level of community transmission of Covid-19 throughout the Southeastern US. The majority of our burners come from Southern states, although we have Alchemists from all over the world. If October sees low transmission in northern Georgia, but moderate to severe levels of transmission in another state, we would have had to cancel the event because of the risk. Community transmission is tough to predict, and any spike in the Southeast would increase the likelihood of transmission at our event. As we have said numerous times, we simply cannot allow that risk.
Can our vendors (portos, radios, equipment, tents, etc.) safely handle our needs? We don’t know if the vendors that we rely on could safely handle our needs during the burn. This especially applies to the ports vendor, since it is known that SARS Cov-2 can be spread through fecal transmission (i.e. its in the poop).
Will we have enough participation and volunteering from the Alchemy community? This is a major issue for any burn. We are all volunteers. If we do not have enough burners to volunteer at every level, and in all the teams, then we cannot hold the burn. We know that a lot of the burners we've talked to, including those of us on the leadership team, are hesitant to volunteer for any activity that would put us at risk, and frankly that includes every volunteer position at Alchemy. We also have serious doubts about having enough people who are interested in coming, and able to afford it after all the economic turmoil we are going through, to make the event able to sustain itself. When we plan an event like Alchemy, we need to have a certain number of people buy tickets and attend for it to be a successful event, both economically and socially. We don’t see any trends that make us think we would have achieved that number of burners.