To the community,

It is hard to write about my experiences related to SnowGlobe.

I am not against SnowGlobe, but I think that it is to big, too loud and too dangerous to be held at the center of our city. It stands in the middle of a forest, which if ignited, may be an unstoppable disastrous blaze.

Certainly Chad Donnelly has good intentions and is willing to repair our ball fields, but take a look at the road to Emerald Bay. A forest fire that started in a December pouring rain storm.

Yes, his eyes mist over at the mention of the 19 year old girl who died as a result of attending SnowGlobe but he has not the ability to bring her back, to compensate her family or to prevent a disaster that staging this entertainment might cause.  Sorry Chad, but we need to get it out of our forest.

I first became aware of it’s presence by accident. I was working inside the city building on Rufus Allen Boulevard. A friend and I were remodeling it for Unity at the Lake, our church. It was  a construction site so there was a certain amount of noise. All of a sudden a freakish bellow shook the building. It was alarming and indescribable. I had never heard anything so loud and unidentifiable. In a few minutes, we realized it was a massive PA system.

I went home to face a blistering, pounding assault which had begun that afternoon and was to go on for eight or more hours each day and into the night even after midnight for the next three nights.

This was our New Year’s weekend. We had no warning and had made plans to stay home and avoid the dangerous winter driving and hazards of intoxicated or hung over revelers on the roads for that weekend.

The din was uncomfortable to put it mildly and my wife, who is a headache sufferer, was beaten for over 25 hours and could find no refuge. She couldn’t even put a pillow over her head as the bass waves were relentless and went through everything.

I was on the phone trying to get authorities and organizers to decrease the volume. It was a horrible experience. I made recordings of it from my deck and took dB measurements. I went to the venue and made measurements from the fence. When I was there, Bob Marley was the between set music and it was reaching 97dB regularly with the unstoppable bass pulverizing the audience, the forest, the neighborhood, the city. We were prisoners, unconsenting and unable to escape.

I have hours of thoughts about my experiences with SnowGlobe and I intend to relate them. Imagine being forced to listen to my lament for hours. It will be similar to being forced to listen to the event or being forced to leave your home to avoid it.

I will offer to play my recordings of the event at the recorded dB levels for our City Council and anyone who wants to hear what I hear for 25 hours on a winter weekend. Any takers?

I am 100 percent sure that the City Council cannot conduct a two-hour meeting while it plays so why should we be forced to endure 25 hours of it?

Let’s get real and not sacrifice safety and the peaceful environment we treasure, for money.

Respectfully,

Dory Smith, South Lake Tahoe