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The toll of several days of heavy rain has left Harris Park “unsafe” and forced the cancellation of a weekend comedy event, organizers say.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, officials with the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival said the decision was made due to safety concerns at the downtown-area park, which like much of London has been battered by heavy rain, including the tail-end of Hurricane Beryl last week.
“Despite our best efforts for a solution, it is unsafe for everyone involved to proceed,” said the organizers of the event, set to feature big-name comics such as Nate Bargatze and Bill Burr.
Ticket-holders will be automatically refunded, they said.
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The remnants of Hurricane Beryl arrived just as 10,000 fans descended on the opening night of the four-night Rock the Park in Harris Park, creating something of a perfect storm of trouble for concert organizers, fans and the park itself. While the show headlined by Nickelback went on, the massive rain created a mess.
By the time Nickelback took the stage late Wednesday, attendees were wading through what one vendor called a “mud river” from her vantage point inside one of the festival’s food trucks. Many attendees had removed their shoes to wade through the pools of mud separating them from a better view of the headlining act, while others lost their footwear to the thick mud.
The next morning, dozens of Londoners responded to a call from Rock the Park organizers for volunteers to help clean up the grounds.
The rain has hardly let up since, with a downpour so severe on Monday that it flooded streets, residential basements and businesses. As much as 75 millimetres of rain fell in some spots during a two-hour period.
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