Nightclub in Bucharest Gutted by Fire - 41 Injured

January 21, 2017 - Bucharest, Romania.  A fire, believed to be started by sparklers on drinks and / or patrons smoking that ignited the roof decor, gutted the Bamboo Nightclub and sent at least 41 people to the emergency room.  No deaths have been reported.  About half of the victims were transported by Emergency Vehicles, while others made their way there on their own.  Reported injuries included smoke inhalation, hypothermia because they ran from the burning building into outdoor temperatures of -12°C (-10°F) leaving their coats behind, and sprained ankles or broken bones because they jumped from the second floor of the building to escape.

(Image ISU via AP)

One witness said that waiters were serving bottles of drinks with sparklers stuck in the tops.  Fireworks and smoking are both illegal in nightclubs and public places in Romania.  Prosecutors have begun an inquiry about the building construction, permits, staff training, insurance, inspections, and other concerns.

(Image Andreea Alexandru via AP)

The Bamboo Club was originally opened in 2002, but was destroyed by a fire in 2005, and then rebuilt.

There is no information available at this time about the building being equipped with fire sprinklers, fire alarm system, or other fire fighting equipment.

Also See:
theatresafetyblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/nightclub-fire-in-romania-kills-27.html

Burn Survivor from The Station Nightclub fire speaks-out for the NFPA

On February 20th, 2003, a fire broke out in a nightclub that killed 100 people in just minutes.  Rob Feeney was there, and was one of the lucky ones that got out before the fire and smoke became to intense to survive.  Join Rob to read more about his experience at the NFPA's Fire Sprinkler Initiative blog.

http://sprinkler.blog.nfpa.org/2015/12/burn-survivor-from-the-station-nightclub-fire-now-nfpas-newest-blogger-and-fire-sprinkler-champion.html

For other posts about nightclub fires use the Theatre Safety Blog's search for keyword 'Station Nightclub'.

Nightclub Fire in Romania Kills 27, Injures 170

2015-10-31 - Bucharest, Romania - An late night fire in a basement nightclub claimed 39 lives, injured over 190, and was completely predictable and preventable.  A heavy metal band Goodbye to Gravity gave a free Halloween concert at the Colectiv nightclub just south east of the city center, and during the show some fireworks (pyrotechnics) were set-off which ignited a foam covered column that was adjacent to the stage.  Witnesses said the fire rapidly spread across the foam and pine wood covered ceiling causing a panic in the crowd.

Ironically, the band had just played 'This is the Day We Die' from their new CD "Mantras of War", and then as they started into the next song the fire started.  Delia Tugui, a Spanish teacher at the American International School of Bucharest who was at the concert with her husband and son, said club goers were surprised by how fast the fire spread and panicked.

Moments before the fire

"The lead singer made a quick joke: 'This wasn't part of the program.'  The next second, he realized it wasn't a joke and asked for a fire extinguisher," she wrote on her Facebook page.  "In 30 seconds . . . the fire spread all over the ceiling.  People rushed to the entrance but it was too narrow, and people panicked.  Behind me people stampeded, climbing over each other, to try and get out."

The fireworks spray towards the foam covered column

"I was two meters from the door and I barely got out," she told The Associated Press.  "People started pushing each other, stamping on each other, it was incredibly quick."

Patrons still smiling unaware of the hell that was about to break loose

"Friends were looking for each other under the pile of people," she said. "It was a nightmare."

She said she knew some would not escape.

"I realized that those on the other side of the bar would not get out alive."

Once she got outside there was a blast and her hair caught fire, Tugui said.

"I tried to put it out with my hands and got burned.  People behind me were burned from head to toe."

A  3D computer generated graphic of the nightclub fire can be seen here.

The band’s lead singer, Alex Pascu, was hospitalized and later died.  Antena 3 TV said bass guitarist Alex Telea was reported missing by his parents, who have been searching for him.  he is also confirmed dead.

Florentina Dinca, 38, who lives opposite the nightclub, told The Associated Press there was chaos as emergency workers tried to aid the badly burned clubgoers.

"They were very frightened, they screamed, ambulances didn't know what to do," she said.  "Girls had their hair burned, they had burns on their faces.  It was terror."

“There was a stampede of people running out of the club,” a man who escaped without shoes told Reuters.

A young woman who sustained minor injuries described the club bursting into flames.  “In five seconds the whole ceiling was all on fire. In the next three we rushed to a single door,” she told television station Antena 3.

The nightclub had only one entrance / exit and it was just 80cm wide (31 1/2").  Paul Angelescu, a reporter with ProTV, said the mayor told him the venue had all the necessary permits to operate as a club, however, they did not have permits for any pyrotechnic use.  Further investigation will determine if the facility was indeed compliant with current local building codes.

The club was said to have 300-400 in attendance that night, and some were minors. It was only permitted for 80 occupants.  In Romania it is permissible for adults to bring their children into nightclubs, and occasionally unaccompanied minors enter the clubs because the monitoring of age is very lax.

The nightclub is one of dozens of clubs and bars that have sprung up in the Romanian capital in recent years, a lively city of 3 million renowned for its nightlife and long hours.

Shooting candles and indoor fireworks are common in bars and restaurants in Romania and enforcement of fire regulations is poor.

Twelve hospitals were filled with burn and smoke inhalation victims, and hundreds lined-up outside to donate blood.  The death toll is expected to rise.

Update:  Thousands of protesters in Romania have been gathered in Bucharest expressing anger towards the government for the lax building code enforcement that led to this tragedy.  Prime Minister Victor Ponta and his Cabinet resigned Wednesday, November 4 in response to public demands for accountability.

If this story seems all-to-familiar, numerous nightclub fires have been initiated by the illegal use of pyrotechnics which ignite foam materials used for sound absorption.  These include The Station nightclub fire in 2003 at West Warwick, Rhode Island, which killed 100 people; and and the Kiss nightclub fire in Santa Maria, Brazil, which killed 242 people.

More coverage can be found at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colectiv_nightclub_fire

This blog entry updated 2015-11-07-10:15PM

Fire and Audience Safety in Nightclubs

I went to a nightclub / restaurant tonight to get a bite to eat, and they had me seated upstairs in a balcony area that overlooked the main level of the nightclub.  Just as I was getting ready to leave, I went to go down the staircase that I had originally come-up, only to find that it was blocked with a portable sign that read:  "Stairs Closed" hand-scrawled in chalk.

There were no other instructions, signs, arrows . . . nuttin!  And the  EXIT  sign above the 'closed' stairs was still illuminated, beckoning all to "come-hither".

I look over the railing back towards the bottom of the staircase, and I see that the club has cordoned-off what was the main entrance to the club, and a band is loading-in their stuff.  The usual junk is piled every which-way: drums, speakers, guitars, mic stands, road cases . . .

Huh?  I look again, a sure enough, my eyes are not fooling me, they have removed the host stand and they are using the main entrance to the club as the stage.  I can see the glowing red  EXIT  signs over the doors.  I look around upstairs and I do find another exit, although it's not well-marked. So this means that 1/2 the upper balcony audience may have to go down the other stairs, and 1/2 may have to find their way out through the adjacent bar area (again - the  EXIT  sign in the adjacent bar area is NOT visible from the show room balcony seating area).

Next, I go downstairs to get a better look.  Once there, I see that at the bottom of the 'closed' staircase (which ended right at one of the two front doors), they had amplifiers and junk stacked in the travel path.  So I look around some more.  To the other side of the other main entrance / exit door there was a doorway that went into a souvenir shop at the time I came in to dine.  The souvenir shop had another exit door to the street, but now it was closed-off and inaccessible.  I moved away from the band's makeshift performance area and I found a passage out to anther adjacent part of the bar, it has an  EXIT  sign, but the lamps are burned-out, and the passage is circuitous and poorly illuminated.

I follow that passage into the adjacent bar chamber, and I can see two possible egress routes.  One has a vestibule with another door leading to the outside, but the  EXIT  sign for this door is only visible to about 1/2 of the room, or less.  I walk closer to this exit door and gradually the overhanging soffit that forms the vestibule area around the door reveals that there is an  EXIT  sign above the door.  Mystery solved!

Final count:  One functional exterior EXIT from upstairs (sign not visible from the balcony audience area), Two functional exterior EXITS from downstairs (one of which the sign is mostly obscured, neither of which are visible from the central audience area for the make-shift stage).

This means that a space that had SIX exits during the day (a light density crowd, mostly people dining) when the Fire Marshal visited and there was a lot of outside light filling the space through the windows; and only had THREE working exits at  night  when the patrons are highly inebriated and more densely packed.   All this on a Friday night in a college town . . .

Nightclub Fire in Brazil kills 235, injures over 140

The following report is excerpted from an article in by Associated Press writer JULIANA BARBASSA Original content here:  http://news.yahoo.com/no-alarm-only-1-exit-brazil-nightclub-fire-002812171.html 

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (AP) — The nightclub Kiss was hot, steamy from the press of beer-fueled bodies dancing close. The Brazilian country band on stage was whipping the young crowd into a frenzy, launching into another fast-paced, accordion-driven tune and lighting flares that spewed silver sparks into the air.

It was another Saturday night in Santa Maria, a university town of about 260,000 on Brazil's southernmost tip.

Then, in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning, January 27th, it turned into a scene of indescribable horror as sparks lit a fire in the soundproofing material above the stage, churning out black, toxic smoke as flames raced through the former beer warehouse, killing 233 people.

Picture Tweeted just as the blaze started

"I was right there, so even though I was far from the door, at least I realized something was wrong," said Rodrigo Rizzi, a first-year nursing student who was next to the stage when the fire broke out and watched the tragedy unfold, horror-stricken and helpless.

"Others, who couldn't see the stage, never had a chance. They never saw it coming."

A security guard said afterward that the club was at its estimated maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000 people.

There was no fire alarm, no sprinklers, no fire escape. In violation of state safety codes, fire extinguishers were not spaced every 1,500 square feet, and there was only one exit.

As the city buried its young Monday, questions were raised about whether Brazil is up to the task of ensuring the safety in venues for the World Cup next year, and the Olympics in 2016. Four people were arrested for questioning, including two band members and the nightclub's co-owner.

Rizzi hadn't even planned on going out that night. He was talked into it by friends and knew dozens at the club. He said the first sign of a problem was insulation dripping above the stage.

The flames at that point were barely noticeable, just tiny tongues lapping at the flammable material. The band's singer, Marcelo dos Santos, noticed it and tried to put out the smoldering embers by squirting water from a bottle.

The show kept going. Then, as the ceiling continued to ooze hot molten foam, dos Santos grabbed the drummer's water bottle and aimed it at the fire. That didn't work either, Rizzi said. A security guard handed the band leader a fire extinguisher. He aimed, but nothing came out; the extinguisher didn't work.

At that point, Rizzi said, the singer motioned to the band to get out. Rizzi calmly made his way to the door — the club's only exit — still thinking it was a small fire that would quickly be controlled.

The cavernous building was divided into several sections, including a pub and a VIP lounge — and hundreds of the college students and teenagers crammed in couldn't see the stage. They continued to drink and dance, unaware of the danger spreading above them.

Then, the place became an inferno.

The band members who headed straight for the door lived. One, Danilo Brauner, went back to get his accordion, and never made it out.

The air turned dense and dark with smoke; there was no light, nothing pointing to the single exit. Rizzi found himself clawing through a panicked crowd that surged blindly toward the door.

"I was halfway across the floor, I could see the door, but the air turned black with this thick smoke," he said. "I couldn't breathe. People started to panic and run toward the door. They were falling, screaming, pulling at each other."

The manager, meanwhile, was outside dealing with a drunk and belligerent young man. No one there had any inkling of the desperate scene unfolding just beyond Kiss' black, sound-proof double doors, said taxi driver Edson Schifelbain, who was in his car, waiting for passengers.

A security guard poked his head out and said there was a fight. A fraction of a second later, someone inside yelled "Fire!" The manager opened the doors and it was like opening the gates of hell, Schifelbain said. 

Young men and women, mouths and eyes blackened with soot, clothes tattered, tumbled out screaming and crying. Some ran right over his taxi and two other cabs parked nearby, breaking mirrors, windshields, bashing in the doors. Horrified, he realized his cab was in their way, but couldn't move it because there were bodies hunched over it, collapsed in front of the tires, everywhere.

"The horror I saw in their faces, the terror, I'll never forget," he said. Two girls gasping for air climbed into his car, and as soon as he was able, he sped the six miles (10 kilometers) to the university hospital.

"One of them was crying all the way, screaming, 'My friend is dying,'" he said. "I did what I could. I don't know what happened to those girls." 

Inside the club, metal barriers meant to organize the lines of people entering and leaving became traps, corralling desperate patrons within yards of the exit. Bodies piled up against the grates, smothered and broken by the crushing mob.

Rizzi was stuck, unable to move, taking in gulps of smoke, feeling the gaseous mix burn his lungs.

He was within seconds of passing out, he said, when the whole frenzied mass suddenly lurched forward. The gates gave way, and everyone toppled over. Rizzi was lying on top of two or three people, several more heaped on top of him. He stuck out his hands, smacking them against the sidewalk and door.

Someone pulled him to safety. "To get out, I climbed, I pulled people's hair. I felt other people grabbing me, hitting me in the face," he said. "It's hard to describe the horror. But once I was outside, I recovered, and started pulling out the others."

Soon, he said, the street was a sea of bodies.

This was the scene 24-year-old Gabriel Barcellos Disconzi found when he arrived about 3:30 a.m., an hour after fire broke out. Wakened by a phone call from friends, the club regular immediately started pulling out bodies as smoke spewed so thick that entering the building was unthinkable. 

Using sledgehammers and picks and their bare hands, he and other young men broke down the walls. Born and bred in Santa Maria, the outgoing young lawyer had dozens of friends and acquaintances inside.

"It was all so fast, there was no time for anything, no time for crying over a friend," he said. "It was dead people over here, living over there. Body after body after body."

Both Rizzi and Disconzi were there when they broke into one of the bathrooms and found a tableau of nearly indescribable desperation: It was crammed with bodies, tangled and tossed like dolls, piled as high as Rizzi's chest. In the darkness and confusion, concert-goers had rushed into the bathroom thinking it was an exit. They died, crushed and airless in the dark.

"I'll never forget the wall of people," Rizzi said. Disconzi helped load them into a truck. Just the dead jammed into that bathroom filled an entire truck, he said.

By this time, the city was waking up to the dimension of the tragedy unfolding at its heart. Doctors, nurses and psychologists began arriving, giving immediate assistance — checking eyes and respiratory passages, stabilizing the burned, resuscitating those whose hearts had stopped or lungs had failed because of the smoke. The living they loaded into ambulances. The mounting number of dead went into trucks.

At Charity Hospital, the region's largest, "It was a war scene," said Dr. Ronald Bossemeyer, the technical director. "Trying to give care, comfort the living, and keep family members who started to arrive from overwhelming everything — it was madness," he said, choking back tears. "The wounded, the doctors, people running with saline, with oxygen. We've never seen so many patients." 

As families waited, nurses and technicians ran back and forth, bringing an earring, a shoe, a wallet, anything that could help identify those still living, Bossemeyer said.

As doctors were at work saving those who could be saved, a group of mothers was calling around to check on one another. Elaine Marques Goncalves woke up to that terrible question: Do you know where your child is? 

With a jolt, she realized two of her sons, Gustavo and Deivis, had not come home the night before. "I knew they'd gone to a club, but I didn't know which one," she said. Trying to keep calm, she joined the multitude pressing for news outside the hospital.

Hours later, she got some good news: Gustavo had burns on 20 percent of his body and had suffered two heart attacks as his lungs failed to draw oxygen, but he was alive and being flown to the state capital, Porto Alegre, for treatment. 

"I had time to put my hands on him and say, 'My dear, your mother is here with you,'" she said. "He was sedated, but I know he could hear. Then I had to tear myself away and go find my other son."

Hours passed as the dead piled up in the city gym. It took an entire day of anguish before she learned what she'd dreaded most: Deivis was dead.

As he lay there among basketball hoops and water coolers, one body among so many, she asked the questions on everyone's mind.

"How can a club just burn like that? People have to know what happened here," she said. "It won't bring back my son, but I have to ask. This nightclub was beyond capacity. The whole world has to know. Why couldn't they get out?"

*********************

Police were questioning the club's owner and interviewing witnesses as part of an investigation into what caused the blaze, state-run Agencia Brasil reported.

The club's license had expired in August and had not been renewed, local fire official Moises da Silva Fuchs told Globo TV.

In total, at least 235 [as of 1/30/2013] died - almost an even number of men and women - while over 140 people were treated in hospitals, Reuters reported.

Reinaldo Azevedo, writing on the Veja news website, asked why the fire department had previously approved a venue with only one exit. "Our grief must also exercise wrath," he wrote. "This is not a tragedy manufactured by chance. It is the work of a chain of negligence."

Ongoing updates about this event can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_nightclub_fire 

A good commentary and news summary from the Ingorsoll-Rand Door Hardware Company's blog site I Dig Hardware: http://idighardware.com/2013/01/kiss-nightclub-santa-maria-brazil/

*********************

1940 - Rhythm Nightclub, Natchez, Mississippi - 209 fatalities.

1942 - Coconut Grove Nightclub - Boston, Massachusetts - 492 deaths.

1977 - Beverly Hills Supper Club - Southgate, Kentucky - 165 dead.

1981 - Stardust Nightclub - Dublin, Ireland - 48 killed.

1996 - Ozone Disco Pub - Quezon City, Phillipines - 162 died.

In 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire at club in Luoyang, China. 

2003 - Epitome Nightclub - Chicago, Illinois - 21 fatalities.

A 2003 nightclub fire killed 100 people in Rhode Island at The Station Nightclub after the rock band Great White illegally used pyrotechnics that ignited combustible foam soundproofing that lined the walls and ceilings of the venue.


Another celebration where fireworks ignited ceiling décor occurred in Buenos Aires, Argentina's República Cromagnon nightclub in 2004; the death toll there was 194.

A 2009 fire at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, was caused by fireworks igniting plastic decorations on the ceiling; 152 died as a result.

Killer Show - Not your normal night out.

Author and Lawyer John Barylic has summarized the events that led up-to and resulted in the 2003 fire that killed 100 people at The Station Nightclub in East Warwick, Rhode Island.  His book summarizes the mounds of documents researched on behalf of the families of those injured and killed that fateful night.

The story of the fire, its causes, and its legal and human-tragedy aftermath, is one of human lives put at risk by petty economic decisions – by a band, club owners, promoters, building inspectors and product manufacturers. Any one of those decisions could have potentially avoided the tragedy. Together, however, they formed a fatal critical mass.

Information about his book can be found at www.killershowbook.com

The site include reviews of the book, photos from the event, and links to interviews.

Photo Credit:  Daniel Davidson (Copyright holder)

Other interesting links about this event:

NIST Disaster and Failure Studies:
www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/fire/station_nightclub_fire_2003.cfm

NFPA Case Study: Nightclub Fires:
www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/research/case_study_nightclub_fires.pdf

Fire Engineering Magazine:
www.fireengineering.com/articles/print/volume-165/issue-1/features/station-nightclub-fire-revisiting-lessons-p1.html

Pants on Fire!

Station Nightclub Fire - West Warwick, Rhode Island 2003

Most of us mere mortals never get to play Fireman in real life, so getting the opportunity to handle fire extinguishers, find-out about the adrenaline rush of putting out a fire, and experiencing the actual time constraints of a fire event up-close and personal doesn't come along too often.

This can change for all of us if we get together with our local community and make an effort to get Fire Extinguisher Training Programs set-up and active.  Most communities and fire departments cite the expense of recharging fire extinguishers as the main reason they don't provide this kind of training.  So, whats a wanna-be fire fighter to do?

Bullex Corporation decided that there needed to be a better way and they came-up with a training device that doesn't go through fire extinguisher powder.  It's call the Bullseye and it kind of looks like a flat-screen TV with a big remote control.  The screen is not a TV display though, instead, it is a computerized fire simulator that grows, glows, flickers, and dances just like a real fire (only without the heat and smoke).  At the base of the unit are special sensors that detect laser light that comes from a simulated Fire Extinguisher.

The Bullseye simulated Fire Extinguishers are pretty fancy units - not just a Wii controller stick.  They come in three sizes just like the real deal: 5 pound, 10 pound, and 20 pound; and they have a loudspeaker inside of them so you get that sense of whoosh! as they simulate a discharge.  Real nozzles, pull-pins, and squeeze handles, too.  They are even heavy like a real fire extinguisher.

The trainer sets-up the fire simulation to suit the type of training to be performed - they set the type of fuel and how big the (simulated) fire is going to be, and they say GO! (Or, maybe they don't say GO! and you have to figure it out for yourself - just like real fire.)

The system has a timer that keeps track of how long you take to respond and how long it takes you to put-out the fire.  And guess what?  If you use-up all of your fire extinguisher before you put out the fire -- it keeps burning.  D'OHP!  The system knows how much stuff you have to shoot and when it's gone, it's gone!  Game over.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Real fires don't have an OFF button, and real Fire Extinguishers only have a limited amount of fire fighting capacity.  IF YOU WASTE IT - YOU LOOSE.

PASS  - Know this phrase!
Pull the pin - this is so you are ready to do the job when you get to the fire.
Aim the nozzle at the BASE of the fire - if you point it somewhere else you will just waste the  fire fighting chemical.
Squeeze the handle - don't squeeze it until after you have aimed! (Just like a ketchup bottle)
Sweep the nozzle side-to-side along the base of the flame so you coat the fuel source with the chemical.

The cost of a training kit is about that of a small car, but if you spread that out over the whole community, it can approach a-dollar-a-head.  And there is no reason that the unit couldn't be used to train everybody from kindergarteners up to senior citizens.

Hands-on Training is the most memorable and effective training you can provide.  The community can make the rounds with this and see that schools, social organizations, community groups, and churches could all share in the benefits.  Training all of your performers and stage crew would be a high priority.  Maybe you can give them merit badges!  I'd say that if you didn't keep this thing busy at least 360 days per year that you were probably missing the point.

Dang, this is starting to sound like a Ginsu knife advertisement . . . however, one more thing that is interesting:  Bullex knows that this is a chunk 'o change to spend, so they rent the unit for test drives, too.  And if you decide to buy one within a year of the test drive, then they apply the rental fee to the purchase price.  Good Deal!

More info at: www.BullexSafety.com

Rihanna Concert Shutdown By Fire on Truss

The concert on 10 July 2011, in Dallas, Texas' American Airlines Center Arena (AAC) came to an abrupt halt after some pyrotechnics started a fire on a lighting truss near the front of the stage.  Witnesses say the front rows of the audience quickly cleared-out after sparks and fire started spewing from the truss.  Local TV station and CBS affiliate KTVT had first-hand reporting because several of their employees were attending the show.  KTVT's coverage of the situation can be found here:  http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/07/08/rihanna-concert-ends-with-fire/

A video of the fire shot by concert goers can be found on YouTube:

Up close view:


Quick acting show crew managed to get to the blaze with a fire extinguisher and subdue the flames.  (Not an easy task 30' in the air on a wiggly piece of truss!  Kudos to that guy!)  It appears that the AAC and concert promoter Live Nation didn't have a coherent emergency plan, as it was several minutes before the arena lights came up, and then another minute before an announcement was made that the show was over and that patrons should exit the facility.  Although there was some sense of urgency by the crowd that caused a back-up at the arena exits, once they made it to the concourse they were greeted by vendors still trying to sell them t-shirts and other souvenirs.  Hmmm.  What part of 'LEAVE THE BUILDING" didn't they get?

When watching the video shot by local news crews at the Great White concert in the Station nightclub in East Warwick, Rhode Island, three minutes into the fire there had already killed numerous people.  So, what took so long in the AAC?  Who was asleep at the switch in Dallas?

You can hear the show cancellation announcement on some of the videos found on-line, and it's not very good sounding (OK, it was a cell-phone mic making the recording, but you can still get a sense that the speech quality was less than ideal).  Yet another reason that a professionally recorded announcement is a good idea.  The playback device should be EQ'ed so that the voice track has maximum intelligibility (i.e. not muddy with too much bass) when played-back through the venue's sound system.  It should automatically override ALL other program feeds so that any stage mics, musical instruments, and/or background music tracks are completely muted.

When there is a fire or other emergency incident during a show, there should always be someone that has the authority to call the show, get the lights on, and see to it that an appropriate announcement is made to the audience without any delay.  There is no time to think abut Box Office losses, only people's lives.

Know the difference between a safety plan and an emergency plan - the first is what you need so you don't need the second,  The second is what you need when the first one wasn't successful.  An article published in the IAVM (formerly IAAM) Facility Manager magazine about this can be found here:  www.scribd.com/doc/21929545/Teqniqal-Systems-Facility-Safety-Planning

IAVM (International Association of Venue Managers) sponsors regular training classes on Emergency Planning and Employee Training to address these types of scenarios.  Is your venue a participating member?  If not, consider becoming one, as they have a large body of resources that can help any venue, large or small, non-profit or for-profit, private or public.

This blog's author, Teqniqal Systems, also provides assessment, guidance, and training for venue staffs.  Just like the Girl Scouts, you should always 'Be Prepared.'