Throughout the summer months many of our organizations are involved in Independence Day and other community celebrations.  These events often include races, contests, vendor booths, fireworks displays and parades, among other festivities.  

While each of these activities can pose significant risks to your organization, parades can be uniquely challenging due to the number of participants and spectators involved, with moving vehicles, over a large area.

Parades fall with the ‘high risk, low frequency’ category for many of us, where we are operating large equipment, including floats, fire apparatus or public works equipment near hundreds of even thousands of spectators, with multiple distractions occurring simultaneously.  

And we generally are only involved in one or two parades each year.  If we are even peripherally involved in a parade, we should each take time to review basic safety and risk management procedures that should be in-place for each parade.