“Come Rain or shine”, this is what the event organisers promised… well the former definitely did not want to outshone by the thousands of guests who attended this year’s Dinner en Blanc. An evening which promised to be the highlight of the calendar Year has now turned into a potential PR nightmare for the organisers.
Personally we had looked forward to the event for months, and detailed preparations had gone into ensuring that we complied with all the rules of the event organisers – and we were happy to do so, to be part of the experience.
In hind sight, we could only hope that the event organisers could have performed their own due diligence for an event so “spectacular” as they purported.
Now it’s easy to get carried away by subjective opinions of the night, and I’m sure many will, but let’s look at the facts.
1. Rain was predicted 7 days ago – event organisers were aware of this – “Come Rain or Shine”, as they said
2. Guest were informed to come prepared – which we did…
3. During the month September we have a 63% probability of Thunder Storms in JHB (https://weatherspark.com/averages/29019/Johannesburg-Gauteng-South-Africa - Latest 2012) – Fact.
4. If you have been around JHB in the last 3 years, you should be well aware that the Hail Storms during this period has gotten progressively worse –Just ask the thousands of Car owners who have had Hail Damage to their cars -Fact.
5. Organisers would probably argue - Force majeure - If non-performance of a party is due to an impediment which is beyond the reasonable control of that party and could not have reasonably been foreseen by that party at the time of conclusion of the contract, and neither the impediment nor its consequences could have been avoided or overcome by the non-performing party ("Acts of God", "Force Majeure", "höhere Gewalt"), an the non-performing party did not assume, explicitly or implicitly, the risk of the occurrence of the impediment that party's non-performance is excused. However the Event Organisers were well aware of the Impending Weather hazard –Fact.
My biggest concern would be, what if guests were struck by lightning? This would have been a tragedy of Epic proportions. “We can all recall the school boys who were struck by lightning just last year while playing Cricket”
Bringing these thoughts back home, we had a guest who was pregnant, what if something happened to her? Thank God nothing did! Would the Event organisers have washed their hands clean of that as well?
What were their Contingency plans? No Plan B? So hope and pray guests don’t get injured, trying to escape a lighting Storm? Should they not have constructed a marque for guests to “weather” out the storm which was predicted?
My only hope is that Event organisers sympathise with guest who were expecting the spectacular… and take this as learning…
Truly disappointing end L