Connoquenessing Township to learn from experience handling Trump rally
CONNOQUENESSING TWP — While the Butler Farm Show draws thousands every year for a multiday event, the rally for former President Donald Trump was the first time that the township had drawn such a large crowd for a single-day event, and the supervisors want to ensure it would be more prepared for the next one.
Supervisors on Wednesday, Aug. 7, approved a proposal to create a new ordinance which would set up a permitting process for large events. This, in effect, would require event organizers to share information with the relevant parties, such as emergency services and business owners, to allow them to plan for the event.
The assassination attempt at last month’s Trump rally, which saw one spectator killed, two seriously injured and Trump himself struck in the ear, was the main topic of the township meeting Wednesday night, the first since the rally.
Township officials and emergency personnel described an atmosphere of confusion in the days leading up to, and especially following, the rally.
According to township Supervisor Angela Fleeger, the township was not told anything about the plans for the rally until after news broke just before Independence Day that a rally was happening at the Butler Farm Show grounds July 13. It took several days and multiple phone calls to public officials for Fleeger to receive an official confirmation that a Trump rally was coming, leaving little time to plan for the large expected crowd.
“About 5:17 p.m. Monday evening (July 8), I did get a call from Dan Cox with our emergency management, and he did call to inform me of the upcoming rally,” Fleeger said. “That would be considered the first official notice that we actually received within the township of the rally that was up and coming. That was four business days left, guys. Four business days for a rally of that magnitude, and we were very alarmed about it, to say the least.”
Last month’s rally was not Trump’s first visit to Butler County, as he made an earlier stop in October 2020, just weeks before his loss to President Joe Biden. That earlier visit was held at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport in Penn Township.
This time around, the airport denied the Trump campaign’s request to hold a rally there, because of a schedule conflict.
Also caught off guard was Matt McConnell, captain of the Connoquenessing Volunteer Fire Company, as well as the aforementioned Cox. Their immediate concern was not an attempted assassination, but reducing the amount of suffering in the expected 90-plus degree heat that Saturday.
According to McConnell, emergency services had their hands full treating rallygoers who were suffering from heat exhaustion.
“We treated 250 (for heat exhaustion), and they stopped counting at 3 o’clock,” McConnell said. “That doesn’t include when we get a call for dehydration, or whatever, and picked up two others to take back to first aid.”
While the event ended in tragedy, McConnell noted how it could have turned out even worse.
“At Butler (Memorial) Hospital, the ER only has 17 beds. So to only send seven is pretty big for the amount of calls that we had,” McConnell said. “It would have been a disaster for the hospital. It would have overrun not just Butler, but also (UPMC Passavant-) Cranberry and all the other hospitals.”
Fleeger said she hoped the ordinance would help the township plan for future large events.
“There’s now a precedent set in our small community for large events that can exceed tens of thousands of people in a single, one-day event,” Fleeger said. “We must do our due diligence to address the current breakdowns that exist.”
