well, if you can wait until 6:30 PM CDT, the acl festival organizers will make their announcement:
ACL Fest organizers to decide today whether to cancel parts of festival
Friday and Sunday look promising, promoter says.
By Michael Barnes
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Austin City Limits Music Festival organizers said they will announce at 6:30 p.m.today whether to cancel or reschedule portions of the nearly sold-out event because of Hurricane Rita.
Festival promoter Charles Attal insisted Wednesday that the three-day event at Zilker Park, now in its fourth year, will go on.
"No, we will not cancel," he said. "We would wait it out, but it is rain or shine. We will be fine on Friday and Sunday."
Officials with Capital Sports and Entertainment Inc., which is co-producing the festival, said they will not put their fans, musicians or staff members in danger because of high winds, high water or lightning. Yet they resisted defining the thresholds for those dangers.
Hurricane Rita is expected to move through Central Texas on Saturday with winds up to 65 miles an hour, waves of heavy rain and threats of tornadoes.
Industry experts say that 40 mph-plus winds can threaten the trusses used to build outdoor festival stages, especially the upper structures that hold banks of lighting equipment.
"Forty miles per hour is probably not a bad number to start with, depending on the structure," said Karl Ruling, technical standards manager for the Entertainment Services and Technology Association, which represents show business technicians.
Standards for temporary stages are under revision by Ruling's national association because "they blow down sometimes, and it's not pretty when they do."
ACL Festival spokesman Mark Higgins said that organizers, in consultation with Austin safety officials, would make the call on the fate of the festival.
Yet the city could act alone and pull the plug if the weather looked particularly threatening to public safety.
"I don't anticipate that happening," City Manager Toby Futrell said Wednesday. Festival organizers "are professional folks. They're not fly-by-night operators. They have always been professional and responsible."
Futrell said her staff is consulting with festival organizers regularly.
Bill Stapleton, a principal partner with CSE, said the group does not carry rain insurance on the festival, which means that ticket refunds would come out of the producers' pockets. About 65,000 people are expected to attend each day. Three-day passes sold out months ago for prices up to $105. Day passes for Friday were still available for $50 plus service fees.
If Zilker Park is damaged because the festival went on in heavy rain, CSE has promised to restore it to its pre-festival state.
"It's our responsibility to put the park back the way it was when we arrived, if not better," Higgins said.
Victor Ovalle, spokesman for the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, said the park staff would work closely with festival officials on public safety decisions.
"We do have staff monitoring that situation, and they'll be looking at the grounds," Ovalle said. "But it's premature to go into the damage."
The festival is an annual bonanza for local food and retail vendors who set up shop at Zilker Park. They were watching the weather closely Wednesday.
"CSE is calling the shots," said Fred Schmidt, co-owner of Wild About Music, a gallery that sells music-related items. "We'll be out here as long as we can, but there's no point in being our here if there are high winds and it's too dangerous for the musicians to play."
Howard Burke, manager of Roy's Austin, said the restaurant will use a tarp to cover its park operations.
"The show's got to go on; we've got some great food made up," Burke said.
As long as the festival is open, Capital Metro will provide its planned shuttle service, agency spokeswoman Libba Letton said, but it might be cut back because of lower attendance.
CSE officials say no participating bands have canceled so far, and that none has been rerouted because of potential airport closures. More than 120 acts from around the world are scheduled to play.
More than 200 festival tickets were for sale Wednesday on Web sites such as eBay and Craigslist, but only a few sellers posted Hurricane Rita as a reason: a University of Texas student who was heading home to Houston to help his family, and a Houston native who was hosting Houston-area family members and friends and planned to volunteer with the Red Cross in Austin.
Additional material from staff writers Patrick Beach, Joe Gross, Pamela LeBlanc, Ben Wear, Renuka Rayasam and Stephen Scheibal.
