Two Minnesota Disasters, One Lesson for Event Pros

As event pros, we’re no strangers to contingency plans. From backup tech to rain plans, we weigh the risks and implement mitigation measures as needed. Weather is a risk factor that constantly shifts, especially as Minnesota experiences everything from snowstorms to heatwaves. If you work in other regions, hurricanes and wildfires might be added to that list. And while weather may be one of the most routine and regular disruptions for events, it is but one of many risks that challenge carefully prepared event plans. To best mitigate and respond to these risks, we can use a proactive and reactive dual approach to implement practical strategies that keep people safe. Those practices can be demonstrated by the reactions to two recent Minnesota climate disasters.

In 2024, the Blue Earth River experienced historic flooding, with parking ramps and streets flooding, highway closures, and the destruction of a power station after the river overtopped the Rapidan Dam. In 2025, a Derecho-category wind storm developed in northern Minnesota, with winds hitting 106 MPH taking down an estimated nine million trees and peeling off roofs. While both were major disasters, the regions experienced the situations very differently. The Mankato area, which regularly deals with river flooding, had protocols in place to monitor river levels, patrol dams and levees, and pre-determined triggers for activating various strategies in the flood plan. In contrast, Bemidji was issued a thunderstorm watch at 11:30pm, a tornado warning with sirens started at 12:25am, and straight-line winds hit at 12:40am. While Mankato had the relative luxury of implementing proactive measures, Bemidji went to bed on a normal summer day and woke up to a disaster zone.

These two incidents illustrate a critical lesson for event professionals: contingency planning is a spectrum. Some disruptions give us the gift of time with hours or even days to prepare, communicate, and adapt. Others demand immediate, decisive action in the moment. Preparing for both helps ensure our plans actually work when people are counting on us.

Proactive contingency planning means building systems before a crisis occurs. Proactive measures include:

●       Assess your risks, and determine the likelihood of each. The more probable or impactful a disruption is, the more thorough your contingency plan should be.

●       Build out plans with pre-determined action triggers. For example, pick the weather station you’ll use when monitoring upcoming snowstorms, define the thresholds for canceling or delaying an event, and set the exact timing for making that call. The more decisions you make ahead of time, the less hesitation you’ll face during a crisis, and the fewer stakeholder approvals you’ll need in the moment.

●       Create clear communication plans with a designated spokesperson, partner and vendor contact information, and chains of command.

●       Obtain strategy plans from partners, like city emergency plans and vendor policies, to ensure collaboration and prevent unintentional obstacles from one another.

In Mankato, those protocols didn’t stop the flooding, but they helped everyone quickly be on the same team when the rain started to fall.

Reactive measures, on the other hand, are what you implement when disruption arrives with little or no warning. With only minutes between Bemidji’s tornado sirens and catastrophic winds, the community had to adapt in real time by finding safe shelter, assessing the damage, sourcing and allocating resources, and communicating as well as possible through significant power outages. Reactive planning focuses on flexibility, decisionmaking under pressure, and having backup systems you can activate immediately even without full information. When a disruption happens that you had no contingency plan for, reactive measures include:

●       Take stock of your resources. Who can you call on, where can your people go, and what items do you physically need? The more resources you have, the more flexibility you can have in your response.

●       Prioritize clear communications. Routing all communications through one spokesperson can help ensure messages are consistent and avoid confusion.

●       Document everything post‑incident to the extent possible. After a reactive event, performing an after-action review by reviewing timelines, decisions, and outcomes helps you refine future plans and strengthen your proactive systems.

Proactive planning covers you for the disruptions you can see coming; reactive readiness covers you for the ones you can’t. The experiences in Mankato and Bemidji highlight disruptions on two sides of the predictable to unpredictable continuum, with one unfolding over several days and one arriving with no warning in the middle of the night. When you acknowledge both possibilities by blending proactive preparation with reactive readiness, you create strong event safety strategies that are not only organized, but resilient — capable of keeping guests, staff, and partners safe, regardless of how quickly conditions shift.

The MPI MN feature articles cover the people and stories happening in Minnesota's events community. Have a story idea or know someone who should be featured? Send it to Ellie Hartmann at ehartmann@lmc.org.