Commissioners to meet with Gorge operators

EPHRATA - Grant County commissioners will meet Tuesday with representatives of Live Nation, owners of the Gorge Amphitheater in George. The meting was prompted by a letter from the commissioners of Grant County Fire District No. 3, expressing concern about some operations at the site. That included a concert that required response from all the ambulances in Quincy, as well as about a dozen fire personnel, the morning of June 30.

Fire district commissioners met with county officials Aug. 6, a follow-up to the letter they sent on July 12. Their concerns were laid out by Grant County Fire District No. 3 Chief Don Fortier.

"They were concerned about the concert ground and the campground," Fortier said. "They were looking for better protection for the people down there."

The commissioners' concerns were highlighted at the Paradiso music festival, held June 28 and 29. Quincy Valley Medical Center officials said 87 patients came into the hospital during that weekend, from Thursday, when the campground opened, to Sunday afternoon when it closes. Of those 87, seven were sent to Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee.

About 25,000 people were at the concert on Friday and Saturday, according to a letter from the promoters on the festival website. "That was the most taxing concert so far this year," Fortier said, but it's not the only concert where EMS and fire personnel from Quincy, a lot of them, have been called to the amphitheater.

There are EMS personnel on the grounds for most of the time the campground is open, Fortier said, but the biggest problems come when the onsite personnel leave. At Paradiso that was late Saturday night and Sunday morning.

"When they (the onsite crews) are there, everything is fine," Fortier said. But under the contract the onsite crews left at about 3 a.m. Sunday. It's when people started waking up, or should've awakened and didn't, that it got turbulent, Fortier said.

The company that provides service in Quincy has four ambulances in town, he said, and all of them were at the campground that morning. About a dozen firefighters with basic life support (BLS) training also were helping to treat people, Fortier said.

That left the rest of the Quincy area with no ambulance coverage, he said. "The people that support us year-round are without protection at times," Fortier said, and the fire commissioners are concerned about the impact of that.

County commission chair Cindy Carter said commissioners met with Quincy hospital officials, and the amphitheater became part of the conversation. "They kind of brought that to our attention," Carter said. "That was the first time we had heard there's a problem."

In light of the issues, commissioners want to address the problem now, Carter said.