City, state and federal agencies working to ensure Glendale’s Final Four is safe
Americans have spent the better part of March trying to guess who will be in the Final Four and which team will ultimately win.
Glendale’s Division of Emergency Management has focused on the NCAA Tournament, but with a different set of questions that revolve around what-ifs and worst-case scenarios.
Government agencies ranging from public safety to public works are tasked with expecting the unexpected and imagining the unimaginable.
They need to consider these things before they happen, because lives are on the line if they don’t. Some 76,000 collegebasketball fans are expected to descend on University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale for the climax to March Madness on Saturday and Monday. Even more fans without tickets are likely to attend festivities around the stadium.
It’s a major responsibility, but not one that rests solely on Glendale’s shoulders:
» Police and fire departments from across the Valley provide assistance during a major event like the Final Four.
» The Department of Public Safety handles highway traffic.
» And FBI and Department of Homeland Security agents monitor potential threats on a national scale.
And it’s not just law enforcement. Transit departments monitor city traffic and alter traffic lights depending on the situation. Maricopa County Department of Public Health staff monitor events for signs of contagions. Representatives from Arizona Public Service Co. and Salt River Project are on standby to help public-safety officials with power-related issues.
Glendale Police Chief Rick St. John said large cities such as Houston have the resources to handle everything internally, but “mid-level” cities such as Glendale need interagency partnerships to lean on.
“So we have coalition partners — 13 different agencies that have partnered with us under intergovernmental agreements — and they work for us for those events,” St. John said.
The coalition came together when the city hosted its first Super Bowl, in 2008, and has evolved through collegefootball bowl games and championships, major concerts, a second Super Bowl in 2015 and even a WrestleMania.
It’s a massive interagency web tasked with catching every conceivable threat without getting tangled.
That’s where the Emergency Operations Center comes in. Rows of tables, chairs and computers curve around the room in several “V” formations. Ten wall-mounted TVs are tuned to local and national news stations, satellite weather maps and fire-dispatch websites. This glowing information collage can be seen from anywhere in the room, as there aren’t any pillars to obstruct one’s movement or view.
Support staff can patch radios from
other agencies into their frequency should an emergency demand additional specialists. Maps and blueprints of the stadium and surrounding buildings line the walls, and massive printers ensure more are only a few keystrokes away.
The operations center opened shortly before Glendale hosted its first Super Bowl nearly a decade ago. Director Mark Hubler said such centers began popping up after tragedies such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina left emergency-response teams scrambling. The Federal Emergency Management Agency got involved with the DHS, and presidential directives demanded improved interoperability between agencies.
For Hubler, a key advantage of Glendale’s operations center is faceto-face communication.
“The benefit of having everyone in the same room is the benefit of face-to-face communication versus a telephone call or email, which can always be misinterpreted if there’s no (one) to actually work through some of those things,” Hubler said. “When there’s one person in charge of logistics, and yet he needs to get stuff from public works and from (the) water department and from the fire department and from (the) PD — in here, it’s just a matter of walking over and getting those people together and having that conversation.”
Hubler said upper-level chiefs from police, fire and traffic departments will always be in the center, while officials from other departments are “on call” to reduce costs. He said that most emergency scenarios call for those departments initially and the other departments activate when additional information is gathered.
Glendale has known it will host the Final Four since 2014. The long lead time is intentional. Hosting major events like the Super Bowl and Final Four can take years of planning. Everyone needs to know their duties and when they need to get done.
It’s Jannine Wilmoth’s job to ensure everyone knows their job.
As Glendale’s emergency-management coordinator, Wilmoth spends her days developing and maintaining the city’s reams of emergency plans. She reviews the appropriate plans with the appropriate staff to ensure everyone knows what they’re doing. The training sessions also breed relationships between emergency staff, meaning few people are strangers come game day. “It’s like planning for a multiday wedding,” Wilmoth said.
Glendale’s no stranger to hosting major events, but the Final Four presents a unique challenge in being a multiday event.
The denser, elongated schedule makes it harder to predict how many people will be where, and for how long. Those leaving the stadium will likely come back, meaning additional security scans and searches. The same goes for delivery trucks.
The stream of activity makes it hard to ensure a locked-down location — such as University of Phoenix Stadium — stays that way. It also means city employees working long hours and multiple shifts to keep everything running smoothly.
Of course, that comes with a cost. Protecting tens of thousands of people isn’t cheap. Glendale earmarked $1.1 million in its Final Four operations budget, though city officials say that figure is based on “maximum-staffing scenarios” and expect the actual expenditure will be far lower. Even if costs meet or exceed the $1.1 million figure, Glendale City Manager Kevin Phelps says the benefits of hosting a major event like the Final Four far outweigh the costs — even if you can’t quantify all of them.
“I think it’s really easy and correct to say that the overall (benefit) — when you look at all the benefit to the community in measure — certainly outweighs our investment in protecting the public and what we commit in publicsafety resources,” Phelps said.