SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Officials who run concert venues in Utah are reassessing how they can make sure people are safer following a shooting at an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas that killed at least 59 people.
Bryn Ramjoue, the director of communications for Red Butte Garden, said the mass shooting hit home for her and her colleagues since the garden amphitheater is also an open-air venue, the Salt Lake Tribune reported (https://bit.ly/2yTpbuG ) Monday.
The staff at Red Butte wants to make sure they could get everybody out of the gates in the event of an emergency, Ramjoue said.
“We feel that sense of vulnerability,” she said. “You don’t know where that tragedy is coming from. We got together and said this morning we’ll talk about (our security and emergency protocols) again.”
Staff at Red Butte, which holds an annual summer concert series of about 30 shows, conducted an initial review in May in the wake of a terrorist bombing at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in England, Ramjoue said.
“At our venue, you’re bringing in a backpack, bringing in a picnic - we’ll have conversations about, ’Do we start to check everything?’” she said. “But even if you do check every bag, every cooler, you don’t know what’s going on outside your venue. People still have the ability to destroy lives.”
Frank Zang, spokesman for Vivint Smart Home Arena, said a recent $125 million renovation included several bolstered measures, including a series of balusters surrounding the venue and a new camera system.
“We still have messages around the arena: ’If you see something, say something,’” Zang said. “We all have to band together to protect ourselves.”
Representatives from several other Salt Lake Valley music venues either declined comment or did not respond to the Salt Lake Tribune’s requests.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, https://www.sltrib.com
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