Not everyone is ‘wise after the event’…

Of all the pointless platitudes to express after any given disaster, the one about ‘everyone being wise after the event’ must surely be the most nerve-rackingly irritating of the lot.

For one thing, it is not strictly speaking true. Most ordinary level-headed people would possess the exact same level of ‘wisdom’ before the event, too. And besides, it depends which ‘event’ one specifically has in mind. 

Applied to the fracas that occurred during last Sunday’s ‘Paqpaqli’ charity event at Hal Farrug… well, there were several previous events from which one could (and in most cases did) derive practical ‘wisdom’. This is in fact why such things as ‘safety precautions’ normally exist at events where the propensity for accidents is high. They are the fruit of ‘wisdom’ acquired from the countless crashes and motoring mishaps that have occurred all over the world, ever since the internal combustion engine was first invented. 

Ah, but listen to the reactions today, and you’d think ‘car-crashes’ were an absolutely unheard of eventuality before last Sunday. How can one possibly expect the organisers of a motor show to foresee that a car driven at 200kph might lose control and smash into a crowd of spectators? It’s the sort of possibility that simply defies prediction. Too inconceivable to even imagine…

And yet similar things have happened on countless occasions, often with far more devastating consequences. In fact, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this particular accident was that nobody died on impact. All things told, things could have been unimaginably worse.

But to talk of such an eventuality as ‘unforeseeable’ is stretching things slightly. It becomes even more risible when you apply the same reasoning to standard safety features in practically any other sphere.

Like shipping, for instance. One does not have to wait for one’s ship to actually strike an iceberg with 3,000 passengers on board, to suddenly realise that it might have been a good idea to fit the vessel with lifeboats. Based on past experience involving shipwrecks (which have, after all, been happening for thousands of years), the necessity for such precautions becomes bleedingly obvious. 

Seat-belts are another instance where you don’t need to be Nostradamus to predict the possible consequence of failing to wear one. Awareness of the safety value of a seat-belt does not arise from actually witnessing a passenger smash through a windscreen (or smashing through one yourself). Unless there is a severe mental disability involved, the possibility of that happening should all along be present in your mind… just like the possibility of accidentally falling off a cliff-edge, if you happen to get too close to one.

How much more, then, should the possibility of entirely foreseeable accidents be on the minds of the organisers of motoring events which are attended by large crowds? 

This brings us to what is perhaps the most irritating aspect of the widespread reaction to Sunday’s gross display of negligence as if it were some sort of inscrutable ‘act of God’. It’s not as though the entire concept of public health and safety is entirely alien to this country. Safety regulations do exist, and permits for such events are usually – I stress ‘usually’ – subject to conditions which include adequate crowd safety measures.

George Abdilla, former secretary of the Malta Motorsport Federation, has pointed out how other motoring displays have had rigorous safety conditions imposed on them by the authorities:

“Events organised by the Malta Motorsport Federation, Island Car Club, Malta Drag Racing Association, Valletta Grand Prix and other clubs all have very strict safety standards, which the police enforce rigorously,” he was quoted as saying. “You do not separate spectators from racing cars using flimsy police barriers. When we at the Malta Motorsport Federation organised races, we always had to use concrete New Jersey barriers, strong fencing, and not those riot control barriers.”

Yet for some reason these standards were not observed in this particular event… nor, it seems, at previous editions of the same annual show. This “lack of safety” (Abdilla continues) “was present year after year”.

Incidentally, by ‘riot control barriers’ he actually meant those metal barricades that are more commonly used to divert traffic, or to keep pedestrians from getting in the way of the village feast procession. They are not, and do not even pretend to be, ‘safety features’ at all: their only purpose is simply to delineate areas beyond which access is forbidden.

This also means that there were no crash barriers at all between the crowd and the track at Sunday’s event. It’s not so much that the safety features proved insufficient: they proved to be non-existent. 

In this sense, we are one up on the architects of the Titanic disaster in 1913. The issue there was not that there were no lifeboats at all: but that there weren’t enough to accommodate all passengers. It was, in fact, thanks to that specific wreck that standard international safety procedures first came to be applied… and that was almost exactly 100 years ago.

Besides, the Titanic analogy holds good on another level. A century ago, questions were asked about the culpability for the 1,000+ lives lost in that tragedy. The inquiry was arguably less conclusive that it would be today – don’t forget there were no precise safety standards to neglect – but ultimately the buck stopped with The Board of Trade, which had declared the vessel seaworthy to begin with. 

In other cases responsibility might have been shouldered by the captain, the owners, the shipping line, the insurers, or whatnot. 

But few indeed would argue that no responsibility should be shouldered at all. And fewer still would complain that people asking those questions were being ‘wise after the event’, for merely pointing out what should be common knowledge to one and all. 

Coming back to Saturday’s mishap, the question almost immediately comes crashing into you through the metal barricades. If safety standards have all along existed, and are rigorously enforced by the authorities at all other events… why has this one been an exception? 

It becomes all the more salient when you realise how conspicuously this ‘exception’ jars with the rigour applied in practically all other areas. I have never organised a public event along the lines of a concert or a large-scale party… but I know people who have, and most ended up noticeably thinner of hair following weeks of stress trying to placate an increasingly inflexible Police Force and/or Civil Protection Department. 

I forget the full list of obligations, but they involve full insurance cover, a deposit, ambulances and stand-by medical teams paid for by the organisers, and even facilities (also at organisers’ expense) for the police to strip-search suspects for drugs.

Not all such conditions are necessarily related to safety, or even applicable to other events. But the implications are nonetheless overwhelmingly clear. Organisers of public events are made to feel responsible for all eventualities that may arise: even at such relatively innocuous events as a live, open-air gig.

Yet different standards seem to apply to Sunday’s event, and it is not unreasonable to ask why. So far, no clear answers have been forthcoming… though we did at least get to find out who was NOT responsible for safety standards at an event attended by hundreds.

It wasn’t the police, because (on this occasion) it was “not their job to issue the permit or conduct risk assessment”. It wasn’t the CPD either, because as John Rizzo told us, establishing safety parameters was “not within his competence”. And it wasn’t the Malta International Airport either, whose responsibilities were limited solely to allowing the organisers use of the premises, and nothing more.

This leaves us with the observation (in a TMI article) that Paqpaqli Ghall-Istrina is “organised by the Office of the President in collaboration with a team of volunteers, all working towards the main aim of raising funds for the Malta Community Chest Fund”.

Intriguingly, the same article also observes that, “the Office of the President however enjoys immunity from civil and criminal prosecution”. Perhaps it might be prudent to wait for the inquiry to conclude before deciding whether any criminal prosecution is in order at all... still less to pronounce Her Excellency Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca guilty on all counts.

But there is another implication in that odd remark. The Office of the President enjoys immunity on a wide variety of other levels, too. Is the President of the Republic also immune to the need for a police permit to organise an event: even when it involves high-risk activities such as motor racing? I guess so, as the police themselves appear to have confirmed. Ditto for all the other basic routine requirements, like CPD approval.  

It would be regrettable to have to conclude that, among the many ordinary engagements the Office of the President office feels it can simply sidestep at will, there is also the obligation to provide very basic health and safety precautions at a charity event. 

But it certainly seems, as Abdilla put it, that “charity events (are) a totally different kettle of fish” and that “there are two weights and two measures”, depending who the organisers are. 

One way or another, this anomaly needs to be explained. This way, at least we would come away a little ‘wiser after the event’…