After a few teething problems last year, organisers behind the fledging Harvest Festival spent a whole year planning extensively to make sure everything went smoothly for their sophomore year, leading to pretty much flawless events in Melbourne and Sydney.

But yesterday’s event in Brisbane, which was temporarily evacuated due to a freak hail storm, proved that while you can’t count on the weather, good planning can ensure even softball sized hail stones don’t have to completely derail a festival.

The alternative festival, headlined by Icelandic superstars Sigur Ros and music icon Beck, was briefly evacuated at about 6pm yesterday during the height of the thunderstorm that swept through Brisbane city, shutting down Brisbane airport and damaging numerous properties.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, hailstones up to 9cm in diameter fell in parts of the city during what was described as a “dangerous thunderstorm”. Harvest Festival is located in Brisbane at the Riverstage, in Brisbane’s CBD which bore the brunt of the storm.

Organisers quickly shut down the festival as a safety precaution just before Ben Folds Give were due to hit the stage, warning revelers through the PA and via twitter to leave the site and seek shelter to ride out the worst of the storm.

As they say, the show will go on “rain, hail, or shine”, but recent festival disasters such as Pucklepop two years ago, which saw a number of revelers die, and the stage collapses in Ohio and Canada during windy storms, have led to organisers world wide to take a more cautious approach to the safety of artists and revellers.

Festival boss AJ Maddah also sought out shelter for the storm in his on-site office, which amusingly became an animal shelter too.

Emilie Gramenz from 612 ABC Brisbane was part of the crowd waiting for Ben Fold’s Five to perform and told listeners that she takes her hat off to Harvest for the way they handled the storm.

“Everyone was waiting, someone came on stage but it wasn’t Ben Fold’s Five, it was a festival organiser who said they were currently looking at BOM (Bureau Of Meteorology), seeing that there was a pretty big storm about to hit,” she recalled.

“It had been showering through-out the day, so everybody was already clad in ponchos and gumboots, so you know it wasn’t going to be a huge deal for us but this one was a bit more serious and they were saying we might have to evacuate, so sit tight we’re looking at exits.”

“They disappeared for a few minutes, came back on and said, ‘Yeah we’ve just, you know we can go up to the QT gardens point campus, which is just behind the festival grounds, and if we give you the call, these are the exits you’re going to need to go to, you’re going to need to leave because safety is a big concern.'”

“This was just at one stage, I’m not sure what went on at the three other stages at the festival. The crowd was soft of getting a bit worried, and they’re saying ‘don’t worry, Ben Fold’s is still going to play, we’re just going to have to evacuate for a while’.”

“Then we stood around, cause it started to rain softy, and someone made the call and everyone headed out the exits, sheltered in QT, while the storm just unleashed.”

“It was very amicable,” Gramenz said when asked if the crowd took it well. “People were upset, but they made the most of it. We were filing out the gates to people just singing Ben Fold’s Five songs trying to compensate.”

“It was a bit of a mission, the exit that I was heading out of was quite small, there were trucks blocking the way obviously the set up all the way to the gardens point campus. There wasn’t an organised assembly point or anything, people were just sprinting for the nearest undercover. There were people under benches, and under signs.

“[Ben Folds] said thanks for waiting” when they finally hit the stage. “The festival went on as planned. It was a bit difficult, some festival-goers are very meticulous with the way they plan their lineups. The stages were running at different times because they had been evacuated at different times. It threw the whole lineup and timesheet into complete disarray no one knew when anything was on so it was just chance.”

Thankfully the worst of the storm was short-lived, and acts kicked off again about 8pm with minimal disruption to the timetable – a testament to the preparation and organisation of those behind Harvest this year.

Fans jumped on social media to congratulate organisers for a well run festival, and for a smooth and orderly evacuation during the storm. “It’s amazing” that no one got hurt says Gramenz. “They were trying to keep it quite organised and civilised, to file us out in an orderly fashion, but once the hail started people broke away and started going out for themselves.”

http://twitter.com/ninedorff/status/270141449859915776

“It’s a notoriously muddy, wet, unpleasant area for a festival,” added Gramenz. “I’ve been to a festival there two years ago just before the floods in 2011 and it was the week before the floods actually started in ernest and it rained for two days straight throughout the whole festival. I’ve never seen so much mud in my life. Compared to that experience, Harvest actually did quite well containing the mud and making sure everything stayed pretty clean and everyone was safe.”

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