Reggae on the River @ Eel River

[Drunk Monk]

Going behind the scenes at the reggae revolution
by Heather Muller , 8/6/2006

David Moss scratched the two-day stubble on his jaw and looked up at the sky, as if from the heavens an answer would come.

“We can fix this,” he said, more or less to himself because no one else seemed to be listening.

At the moment, he had three things to fix: an unruly partygoer needed to be wrestled to the ground, a woman who had been hauled off for psychiatric assistance had left a large Rottweiler locked in her vehicle, and then there was the otiscope.

Moss — or the Mossman, as everyone called him — needed an otiscope.

As director of medical services at Reggae on the River, he had an entire medical unit — called Jah Med — at his disposal. He had a crash cart, an automated external defibrillator, four treatment areas, 10 hospital beds and even a psych ward.

He had a 200-person medical team that included volunteer doctors, nurses, physicians’ assistants, nurse practitioners, midwives, chiropractors, massage therapists, psychiatric experts, paramedics, emergency medical technicians and other first responders.

Jah Med could bandage wounds, suture cuts, run IVs and administer medication. It could, if necessary, restart a heart. But a medical doctor was examining a man suffering from a profound earache, and the Mossman couldn’t find an otiscope.

He found a drink instead. A woman carried a blender of peach-colored liquid around the med unit, offering refreshment to Mossman and his fatigued team of volunteers.

When asked what was in the beverage, she smiled and said, “Important nutrients.”

It must have been a nutritionally deprived group of people hanging around one of the two primary medical outposts at Reggae on the River, because everyone drinking the concoction seemed to feel much better.

The psych services team eventually was dispatched to deal with the disruptive partygoer, and security was called to do something about the Rottweiler. Mossman gave up on the otiscope, threw away most of his drink and hopped on a quad and headed down the hill toward the bowl, where more than 10,000 concertgoers swarmed around the stage.

JAH RULES

Diana Totten heads the Critical Incident Team, a 12-person group that handles Reggae’s stickiest problems.

Most of these problems have to do with police and the event organizers’ strong determination to keep law enforcement personnel outside the venue gates and inside a dusty command post set up along U.S. Highway 101.

At the command post Saturday a book about narcotics enforcement held down a few papers set on a table, while law enforcement officials passed the time in an air-conditioned motor home parked nearby.

But narcotics enforcement was notably absent inside the event, where vast quantities of Humboldt County’s most famous agricultural product were openly consumed.

Security personnel turned away attendees possessing bottles and cans at the three gates into the bowl, while people carrying — and even using — glass bongs 2 feet tall were waved through without a second glance.

Totten said the extensive emergency infrastructure in place was designed to minimize the event’s impact on the local community, because local law enforcement and medical services are already so scarce.

The outside is kept out, she said, and the inside kept in.

But by Saturday afternoon, two days into the four-day event, the inside was beginning to spill over.

The Critical Incident Team responded to a report of a man threatening to shoot another concertgoer.

The man was knocked to the ground by members of the team, and then spider-strapped face down to a backboard with his hands zip-tied behind him.

The man was then transported by ambulance through the gates to a waiting Humboldt County Sheriff’s vehicle parked at the command post.

“I don’t think he has a gun,” Totten said, climbing onto a quad as the Sheriff’s vehicle pulled away, “but now I have to go back and search his car.”

She drove to the event’s northern perimeter, where an SUV was sitting with the driver-side door still open.

Crime scene control, like most things at Reggae, was visibly relaxed.

A woman sitting near the vehicle waved her hand dismissively. “I already took everything out of there,” she said.

Totten looked through the vehicle anyway, and then radioed a tow truck to haul it away.

She climbed back on her quad and called to the woman. “Did he have a gun?”

“No way,” the woman said, shaking her head. “There never was any gun.”

Then Totten sped away.


TRIPPING THE NIGHT FANTASTIC

Josh Smith staffed an ambulance parked along the rim of the bowl. A paramedic and the son of fire Chief Eric Smith of the Eureka Fire Department, Smith said Saturday afternoon that things so far had been quiet.

“Too quiet. Scary quiet,” he said.

“There was a guy with a head injury, and then a woman suffering withdrawals from heroin. I guess she thought Reggae was a good weekend to stop taking drugs,” he said, shaking his head.

“Go figure.”

But when the sun went down, the quiet ended abruptly.

Within a 5-minute period shortly after dark, 10 emergency calls went out.

Seven field teams on quads and on foot were dispatched all over the compound to people who had ingested things that did not entirely agree with them.

Some were unconscious. Some threw up. Others behaved in ways that concerned Jah Med staff.

In some cases, the psych team was called in.

Marc Velez, an acupuncture student from Santa Cruz and a 12-year veteran of the Reggae psych team, said the approach typically used is to subdue, distract and soothe the patient.

“Trippers,” as they’re called, are removed from the crowd and taken to the psych unit, informally called the Tripper Tent.

“After they calm down, we walk them back to their tents and tuck them in tight,” Velez said.

And when things don’t go that smoothly, there’s always Plan B. Physically wrestling trippers to the ground and removing them from the venue is a not uncommon occurrence at Reggae.

“Talk-downs and takedowns,” Velez said. “Those are our specialties.” When the talk-down fails, the takedown goes into effect.

Amid the flood of emergency incidents Saturday night, Velez got a report of a tripper on the outskirts of the bowl.

Members of the psych, medical and security teams converged on the area, where Velez attempted to convince one young man that it was time for him to call it a night.

Polite negotiations continued for more than 15 minutes, while the man became increasingly agitated.

Finally, all of the teams converged on the man and knocked him to the ground. Six men struggled to hold him down while he fought and screamed, and after an extended scuffle he was dragged to the Tripper Tent.

While the takedown had been aggressive, the moment was still pure Reggae. The burly security guards who, moments later, would wrestle the tripper to the ground, danced in place around him while awaiting the order to move in.

REGGAE MASH

“Are we running the party or are we part of the party?” Mossman asked.

He paused momentarily to give a smiling thumbs-up to two topless women riding past him on the back of a quad.

“What? Oh, sorry. We’re running the party. Definitely running.”

And by all accounts, they’re running it very well. Even the California Highway Patrol stated in a news release Saturday that the festival had gone “relatively smooth with no major incidents.”

“Hey,” Mossman said, “we have actual medical doctors acting as first responders all over this event. How good is that?”

By some estimates, Jah Med treats and releases back to the event as many as 150 patients a day.

Miki Pimental, a Jah Med volunteer and emergency room nurse from San Francisco General Hospital, said that the goal is to keep as many people as possible out of local hospitals, which would be unable to handle the volume.

Jah Med operates 24 hours a day during the festival, and all services are delivered at no additional cost to participants.

“It’s like a MASH unit,” Pimental said.

Patients who require more treatment than Jah Med can provide are transported to local hospitals.

Such was the case with the tripper Velez had helped remove from the bowl.

An hour after the takedown, Smith and his fellow paramedic, Jeff O’Neil, transported the man, in four-point restraints, to a local hospital.

A few minutes later a dispatcher called for law enforcement to respond to the hospital for a report of an unruly patient.

“Five staff members are attempting to restrain him,” the dispatcher said, “and they are not succeeding.”

Back at the event, psych services coordinator Gene Ching was philosophical about the incident.

“Most people want to cooperate with us,” he said.

Those who don’t cooperate inside the venue are unceremoniously placed outside.

“I think when we look back on this, we’ll see that those were the worst 30 minutes of the entire event,” Ching said.

But Jah Med had little time for reflection Saturday night.

Pimental and her partner Andreas Fischer were dispatched to a report of a man vomiting uncontrollably after eating banana bread laced with marijuana.

“This is a completely different experience from working an emergency room,” Pimental said. “Everyone is so appreciative, because without Jah Med, there would be no Reggae.”

She threw on a backpack of medical supplies and danced through the crowd toward the patient.

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