Every year once Rock the South has come and gone, the local agencies involved in coordinating the event’s traffic, law enforcement, fire, and medical response plan come together with the production company that stages the two-day concert to talk about the effectiveness of their shared efforts.

This year, the annual multi-agency debriefing will take place on Monday at the Cullman Emergency Management Agency, bringing together the Cullman Police Department, the Cullman Fire Department, the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office, Cullman EMS, Alabama State Troopers and others involved in last weekend’s all-hands public safety effort.

The yearly gathering marks a way for agencies to talk about “what went right, what went wrong, and basically go over how we all can make it better to ensure safety of the local citizens, as well as all the out-of-town visitors, who attend or are affected by Rock the South,” according to Cullman EMA director Tim Sartin. “The Rock the South folks are there; all the law enforcement and response agencies are there — it pretty much brings together everybody who has a role to play in public safety.”

While a broad consensus will have to wait until Monday to determine the success of this year’s behind-the-scenes response strategy, an early preview came on Aug. 10, when team leaders who directed the Cullman Police Department’s on-site effort assembled to discuss the issues that arise — as they do each year — that affect their ability to communicate and respond amid all the concert bustle.

Mustered through the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, other law enforcement agencies deployed staff to Rock the South from several of the 10 counties that make up Cullman’s northeast Alabama Mutual Aid system. The extra staffing meant local deputies and city officers received a hand from officers with arrest powers hailing from municipal and county agencies in Morgan, Marshall, Jackson, and Madison counties.

As is inevitable with any big event where tens of thousands of people assemble, there were arrests at this year’s festival. There were medical emergencies, fights, lost patrons, disorderly conduct, and other mishaps and misbehaviors that kept police and responders on their toes.

Overall, said police chief Kenny Culpepper, 21 people were arrested at the venue over the course of the event’s two days. Officers said communications were a challenge at times, as was their ability to locate, down on the ground, the hot spots that dispatchers were describing over the secured radio channel. Developing a standard set of event-specific terminologies and naming conventions, some team leaders noted, could also help better coordinate communications among all the out-of-town law enforcement personnel who have to quickly orient themselves to the festival’s unique response requirements.

Specific ways of addressing those and other issues will likely be put forward next week, as well as in the months to come before next year’s festival. But as Cullman fire chief Brian Bradberry noted, the city’s portion of the event’s larger coordinated response plan went as smoothly as he’s seen.

“I will say that this was the best year of planning and preparation we’ve ever had since I’ve been involved with it,” said Bradberry. “It helped a lot to manage the flow traffic compared with how it has been done in the past.”