FKP Scorpio To Invest Seven Figures Into Making Hurricane Festival Site Rain Proof

After investing €350,000 in a rainwater retention basin this year already, Hurricane Festival promoter FKP Scorpio will triple that investment for a new sewer system spanning the entire festival grounds.

This year’s rainwater retention basin was completed in cooperation with the lower nature conservation authority and conservation organization NABU. It ensures that the festival’s main area “Eichenring” is able to withstand heavy rainfall.

It also serves as a natural habitat for plants and animals. 

By June 2020, FKP Scorpio plans to install an new canalisation system that will be able to drain rainwater from an area of about seven hectares and guide it into the nearest river. The promoter is sure that even heavy downpours like the one in 2016 will not cause any problems in the future. 

Hurricane 2016 had to be interrupted due to violent storms, while its twin festival Southside had to be cancelled entirely that weekend, June 24-26. One of the reasons: festival staff simply couldn’t pump out all of the water that accumulated on site quickly enough.

That won’t happen again, at least at Hurricane. Gullys placed throughout the area will ensure that the water can easily reach the rainwater basin. 

The project requires a complete remodeling of the festival grounds in order for the new system to work effectively. The pipes are planned to have a diameter of about 80 centimeters and will operate without any external energy source thanks to a shallow slant over several hundred meters.

 

FKP Scorpio stated: “A drainage system, that would have been approximately ten times cheaper, was no option, since only a proper canalization is able to handle the strongest rainfalls. The urban land-use planning is already finished, the open call for tender is planned for this autumn.”

Southside Festival, which takes place on the same weekend as Hurricane, sharing most of the lineup, is a completely different site, a former airfield, where most of the infield is asphalted.

Pre-sales for both events in 2020 are going well. In the two days after the 2019 editions, FKP Scorpio already sold 60,000 tickets, just under half of the total capacity.