Ready for Rainbows

by Joshua Wood

As the 50th annual gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light (Rainbow Family) approaches its apex this weekend, entities in both Colorado and Wyoming are preparing for a potential influx of people.

With an expected 10,000 people attending the annual gathering at Adams Park in Routt County, according to the United States Forest Service (USFS), local and federal agencies are working in conjunction regarding the event. At the June 21 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, Councilmember Ben Spaulding and Saratoga Police Chief Ken Lehr provided updates to the governing body following a meeting with the USFS.

"I think it's just, more or less, to keep the town updated and the council updated on things that are going to be going on with that," said Spaulding. "(The) Forest Service for Colorado has been, basically, looking at this situation as an incident and treating it as such, meaning whether it be a forest fire or a large incident they're going to be establishing certain guidelines and protocols."

According to Spaulding, one concern raised by Lenny Layman, Carbon County Emergency Manager, during the meeting was evacuation of the gathering in the event of a fire. Layman initially voiced this concern to the Board of Carbon County Commissioners on May 3. Because Carbon County borders Routt County, a major concern in the event of a disaster such as a fire or flood would be whether Saratoga could sustain such a high number of people.

Lehr told the council he was already working with Layman on what steps could be taken to prepare the Town of Saratoga for a large influx of people in the event of an evacuation. Spaulding expressed his concern about how the police department would enforce the Town of Saratoga's no camping law in the event of rainbow refugees from a fire or flood.

"I'd assume that you're probably working with the county on some of this stuff for extra support," Spaulding said.

"We've got kind of a plan where we could put an overflow of people: the high school, the community center. They've got resources as well," Lehr said. "They've got a mobile command center they can bring down, there's bedding they've got access to that they can bring in."

The chief said the most the Town of Saratoga would be able to take in would be 1,500 people, approximately 10 percent of the expected gathering size.

"In the event that something would happen, they would probably close down some of the roads going into Saratoga pushing some of those members down to Craig, Colorado," said Spaulding. "There's a lot of volunteer effort here and calling in that volunteer effort in, we can't really sustain a lot of the influx of people so by pushing them down to Craig it kind of keeps them within Colorado."

Barring any kind of natural disaster, Lehr said he believed the biggest impact his department and the town would experience would be with the hot pool.

"I think the big impact ... is going to be next weekend when people are traveling up there and when they come back," said Lehr. "The hot pool ... it seems like everybody has to stop and hit that. Not everybody's going to come this way but I see that as probably being a direct impact with us is probably the amount of traffic in town."

The potential Rainbow Gathering traffic would coincide with the influx of traffic already seen in Saratoga during the Independence Day weekend. 

On June 25, four days after the Saratoga Town Council meeting, the USFS announced a temporary area closure in California Park, just south of the location of the Rainbow Gathering due to "the high probability of excessive public use."

"This is one of the forest management tools we have available to utilize during times of extreme circumstances," said Forest Supervisor Russ Bacon in a press release from the USFS. "Closing portions of the Forest is not something we take lightly. In this case though, it is the right thing to do."

The peak of the Rainbow Gathering is expected to occur on July 4 and begin to disperse following the holiday.