Discussion: Troubles in Swiss-land

Much as I am loath to criticize organizers, it seems something is necessary after reading a glowing report in this morning's Luzern newspaper about the Swiss army operation that transported 3000+ orienteers up to, and then back from, yesterday's event site. Not an easy task -- roughly 45 minutes each way, convoys of 7 trucks at a time leaving every 13 minutes, steep essentially one-lane mountain road so they had to figure out passing places, fog and rain, getting very heavy as the afternoon went on.

It was not an easy task, and there was reason for a nice report.

Except for one thing. They failed one thing that every military person has drilled into them -- know where your people are, account for them, and don't leave any behind.

Roughly 100 orienteers were left in the cold pouring rain for the better part of two hours, because the army went home before its job was done. Among them Lyn, Sandra, and Christoph, all with very late starts. They were in line for the next convoy, and it never came. Organizers went by and didn't pick them up (thinking the next convoy would get them). It was not a pretty scene. Eventually the last convoy that had headed down, realizing that there were still people up there, came back up to get them.

And at least for some of us, things aren't any better today. Those of us who use start 3 (the very old and very young), already relegated today to a less interesting map, have had the day canceled, no orienteering at all, apparently due to flooding. Hard to feel anything but sympathy for the organizers, but it still sucks.

And I heard the road up to the area for the 4th day on Thursday has major storm damge. We shall see.

At least with respect to transportation, that smacks of a certain experience in Ukraine. And who would thought there would be anything in common between Swiss-land and the Terrain de Tymoshenko?

It is hard to control the weather, and I feel for the organizers. It also makes me glad that our Army, when hosting us at West Point, has never abandoned anyone :)

"Except for one thing. They failed one thing that every military person has drilled into them -- know where your people are, account for them, and don't leave any behind."

I don't think it is the army to blame (in this case;) as this type of assignments are not military run. It is rather the case that an organizers can make use of available military cars and voluntary people driving these cars (just because they like driving these vehicles). Most of the drivers have not served in the army for 20 or more years. It is clearly the organizer of the O-event who needs to track where the runners are and if he needs to send another convoy to the finishing area.

As you say - let's see what the second half brings with hopefully better weather...

maybe i shouldn't stereotype, but organizations/nationals that are proud of their clockwork precision, often make assumptions that things can't go wrong, and don't develop an ingrained ability to improvise. Speaking from personal experience in their neighbor on the south, a bus failed to pick some american college students, and with a bit of negotiation and improvisation with the locals, they were eventually shuttled to their destination.

Posting under son's pseudynm who is at the Swiss 6 days with my daughter who was one of the ones left by the bus. Just received a text from her saying she had 1 hour 40 mins to wait in rain. It is her lot to be rained upon in the Alps this year but forecast tomorrow is 27 degrees celsius so the campers can dry out.
Day 6 is going to take the place of Day 4 as there have been landslides to the original Day 4 areas. If the landslides can be cleared by Saturday the races will take place on the Day 4 area. That will affect the Euromeeting races too. Enjoyed reading your account of the races and seeing your maps and pictures of the areas PG. Day 2 terrain looked very reminiscent of the moors of northern England and the usual conditions - mist and rain and bog.

I don't think it is the army to blame (in this case;) as this type of assignments are not military run. It is rather the case that an organizers can make use of available military cars and voluntary people driving these cars (just because they like driving these vehicles). Most of the drivers have not served in the army for 20 or more years. It is clearly the organizer of the O-event who needs to track where the runners are and if he needs to send another convoy to the finishing area.

That might be true sometimes but I don't buy it in this case, both on the basis of what was in the paper and what I observed.

According to the paper, the transportation system was very much conceived, planned, organized and operated by the military. And all done in brilliant fashion. According to what I saw, all the drivers, and all the folks on the ground with radios at the various checkpoints were in military uniform, and they weren't young recruits either. The military was clearly in charge and they blew it.

That said, it doesn't let the organizers off the hook. They emphasized again and again how it important it was under the conditions to make sure you checked in at the finish so no one would be left out there. And yet they made no apparent effort to deal with this situation.

Look, things happen. You plan as best you can but when something bad happens, it's how you react that counts. I remember the Swiss 6-Day, 1993. Bus transport up to the pass above Olivone. I happened to be on the bus that overheated, and then the engine caught fire, and then the whole bus caught fire and burnt to almost nothing. Blocked the road up to the pass. The organizers re-routed traffic up the old narrow road up the other side of the valley, delayed the start 1 hour, got the word out efficiently, and pulled the day off in a totally impressive fashion. I assume yesterday was just an aberration. But it happened.

To add to yesterday's woe, I believe H21E and HAL courses were voided, even if times are posted on the web page. I know awards weren't given out for them. The story I heard, and remember it's just hearsay, is that someone came in early, said a control was wrong. The organizers went to check, and moved it. Then someone else came in and said the control was wrong. On a second trip out there, the organizers determined it had been correct originally, and moved it back. But by then the damage had been done.

Sounds like a tale of the old days in the USA.... :-)

And then today, I show up to catch the bus to the assembly area and find out all courses from Start 3 have been canceled, too much rain, the streams are too high and unsafe to cross. Why only Start 3 (the very old and very young)? Because everyone else was using a supposedly much better terrain, much higher up, much longer climb up and back. And no flooding up there. Can't say I was happy about that.

And then this evening, they announced that there had been landslides on the access road to day 4 (Thursday) and the road was closed and would not be open by Thursday. So they are putting us on the Day 6 (Saturday) map on Thursday, and hoping the road to Day 4 opens up in time to use it on Saturday.

Being an organizer is always a pain in the ass, but this seems to have been an especially difficult week. And it's only half over.

Sharon Crawford was also stuck up there with us, and there were actually closer to 200 people left behind. The caravan (126 people) plus a hefty number of event cars were needed to take all the people down...

Hmm. This would NEVER happen at the 1000 Day!
Come to Laramie next year.

Come to Laramie THIS year!

http://attackpoint.org/eventdetail.jsp/event_3808

So stormy weather in the mountains is not just an Italy / JWOC / Dolomites 5-days phenomenon?

"According to the paper, the transportation system was very much conceived, planned, organized and operated by the military. And all done in brilliant fashion. According to what I saw, all the drivers, and all the folks on the ground with radios at the various checkpoints were in military uniform, and they weren't young recruits either. The military was clearly in charge and they blew it. "

I am finding myself in an interesting situation defending the swiss army:)

Look at the next stages - all the key personnel at the loading and off-loading of the Duro's are SOW staff are not military. And in the swiss military system (no professional army) people will pick up a uniform for this day and return it in the evening - take the chance to talk to one of the drivers in the one of the two remaining stages with Duro's.

I don't know how your German is but there is also a short video on the left showing the street up to Riemenstalden.
Currently they expect the street to be re-opened Thursday evening earliest.

http://tagesschau.sf.tv/nachrichten/archiv/2009/08...#

My German is not bad. Swiss German is another issue, totally impossible.... :-)

I do try to only go with what I'm pretty sure of, and the article, well, it might as well have been written by the army, it was so positive. That's part of what irked me, given what had actually happened the day before.

There were pictures of the landslide in this morning's paper. Looks like a lot of work needs to be done. Back home it might take them a month, or a lot more, to fix it, but then back home folks could just chose a different road, not so many places with such limited access. If anyone can get it open in a couple of days, it would be the Swiss.

It also said that they measured the rainfall at 70 liters per square meter, which I think translates to 7 cm per whatever area? A lot, certainly could cause small stream flooding, but wouldn't seem to be really unusual. Must be an unstable area. I think they had landslides there a couple of months ago also?

Also said in this morning's paper, which I hadn't heard yesterday, was a 59-year-old Lithuanian died out on his course yesterday, heart attack.

It's been a tough week.

I haven't read the positive article (I assume it was printed in the local newspaper as well) but my point is that as an organizers if you make use of the army you have to brief and direct them (at least in CH) but you cannot expect them to know where and for how long they will be driving. These are "only" voluntary people in military clothes with military equipment.

The were landslides pretty much a year ago already in this area and the village has been not accessible for a couple of days. So I don't think it's been a big surprise for anybody around there that this could happen again.
But from a regional perspective the risk of not accessing Riemenstalden again for some days seems reasonable compared to building a new road while the question remains if the same applies for the organizers. However, in this case I actually would agree that the risk of landslides exactly during the SOW is very low, even too low to prepare further alternatives than switching stages.

Let's hope that the better weather will bring better news as well

Plenty can still change in the second half of the week, and it was a tad moist here yesterday too, but methinks you shouldn't blame the SOW organisers for your own failing in not coming to Scotland.

Easily fixed though...

www.scottish6days.com/2011/

Maybe a week that did not coincide with the Scottish 6-day would have been drier!

70 litres per square metre is the German way of saying millimetres of rain - so a bit under 3 inches. That's a fair bit, and in a thunderstorm it's quite possible the heaviest part of the storm missed all the gauges.

I've run some very well-organised events in Switzerland, and one very badly-organised one (the infamous 1996 World Cup race with the flash flood).

I've run some wonderful events in Switzerland, highlighted by Zermatt 3 years ago, but this one continues to struggle. More transport problems today, starts delayed part-way through the day, lousy communication. All on a day with perfect weather.

And one more thing that I will get to sooner or later -- the shit orienteering that is being offered to people using start 3. Ain't nothing like what was advertised. At least if I'd known, I could have switched classes. M60 (and younger) had wonderful terrain today. We had crap.

PG--if you weren't trying to beat up on the old guys, you wouldn't be having this problem.

Go back to the younger guy classes where you belong!

Hope the people organising WMOC next year are there (and here!), watching and learning!

I was once at SwissO week (2003 I think) and encountered the same problem with lousy terrain for our course (I think probably M45). While younger ages got this wonderful detail technical stuff, we had a fairly boring run along a trail, picking off the odd control. It was really dissappointing. So bad that if I was the organizer I would have kept all the maps so none of the old guys got to see how good it was for the younger ones ;-)

This is an extreme case of a wider problem - that event organizers (including myself) often short-change the older categories by putting much less effort into the design of their courses.

From Ultimate Orienteering (via World of O):

Debacle at the Swiss-O-Week 2009

A different point of view
http://www.orienteering.asn.au/news/?ItemID=4687