Drencher set off by stranger backstage

[paulears]

Tonight was a bad one. During the interval, somebody went backstage through a pass door and pulled the remote drencher release. I've had this once before in 1976 and that was with the house tabs in - but this was on an open stage during a Showaddywaddy gig. Under the pipe - all active monitors, PA, mains distribution, guitars and main digital PA rack - all soaked. Main RCD on the power panel tripped thankfully, so no electrocutions as people were wading about in the stream.

 

First time I've had to do the show is cancelled speech - and as they'd all seen the thing happen, the vast majority were decent and understood and I actually got a clap - a few disgruntled people complained of course, but I was surprised how well people took it really. As it was actually rather a good show, that made it worse.

 

Lowered in the LX bars, powered up the non-LED stuff and that helped dry things up a bit - but so much nearly new stuff simply full of water.

 

So - a new one for me, and one I hope I never have to repeat!

[themadhippy]

lets go for a little walk

under the drencher of flood

[gareth]

Do you know who it was? Or could anyone identify the culprit? Because that sounds to me as though a charge of criminal damage would probably be appropriate.

[dbuckley]

Ouch. I've seen what a drencher can do on an open stage, but onto equipment must be so much worse...

[paulears]

Security camera shows they didn't come through the stage door - but there is an unlocked pass door from a heaving bar. The remote panel is on the staircase leading to up to the stage.

 

No cameras!

 

The dreadful thing was we were in the crew room - which the person had to pass, but with the door shut. The room is directly below the stage right wing and we heard a loud odd duh-duh-duh sound on the ceiling - and suddenly realisation dawned, and we just ran to find utter chaos up on stage. The panel is a standard hall one - with the iron release and brake on the right, and drencher on the left - with the brake in the up position - I yanked it down, which slowed it to a trickle quite quickly, and then I closed the valve - which amazingly moved after umpteen years open.

 

Realistically - we ended up with 13A multi-ways full of water, 16A in and out 13A panels with metalclas sockets full. A rubber box distro totally and utterly untouched - the design protecting the MCBs from splash and the seals perfect (recent topic retort!), but the rack with their digital mixer a mess.

 

In truth, I had not realised the spread of the drencher pipe I assumed that it went simply downwards - but it didn't - I think many of the holes may have had mild corrosion, so the up and downstage spray was considerable - the carpet in front of our stage extension wet, and the upstage spread wet the kick drum microphone - that's probably 4 metres in total, much greater than the 'curtain' of water I had always assumed.

 

If you have one of these devices, and like me have treated it with almost a careless attitude - you really need an accidental release plan, and thank God all our stage power goes through modern panel - if any venue has non-RCD outlets near the stage that are still in use - we actually have two 15A permanently connected sockets in dips, that we do use occasionally - then fuse protection could have been rather nasty with so much water around. These sockets are connected to somewhere - nobody really knows, they are there and work!

 

The actual release that was triggered is in a stairwell, maybe 20m from the stage, and 15 years ago we had a small fire there and had always thought the cable run had been wrecked, so we put the panel out of our minds, and not being a feature of our licence, just forgot about them. Somebody opened a panel and pulled the handles - the iron release did not work, but the drencher did!

 

Somebody has already asked about disgruntled employees who have been let go recently. I don't want to go in that direction.

[stagemanagement]

Ouch, that's a painful experience.

I'm guessing the insurance company is going to be asking lots of awkward questions about ease of access to such a potentially devastating piece of equipment?

I've never known a drencher release to be situated in a random stairwell, almost all the ones I have encountered have been in the stage area, well away from the "interested" fingers of the kind of idiot who would pull a release valve to see what happens.

 

How did the band react, I assume they now have to get a whole new rack together pretty quickly for the rest of their immediate dates?

[cedd]

Since a supposedly "dry" marquee gig went awry a number of years ago, I always lay out my kit with the worst case scenario of a leak very much in my mind. Pretty much the only thing that I can't position sideways on and that has to be open to water from above is the desk. Racks, digital stageboxes, everything else is laid on its' side.

In that particular instance the heated marquee (on a very cold winter's night) decided to dump a load of condensation straight in to my analogue desk. We have a similar problem at one of our local theatres too. It has a balcony that wraps the whole way around the house, but only overhangs a metre or so over front of house - just enough for the front of the balcony to overhand the desk perfectly. Somebody spills a drink on the front row of the balcony and it finds its' way through the floor and drips straight in to the console. Because of this place I also have a waterproof desk cover (basically a thin black tarpaulin - think it may have been car-related at some point in its' life. Maybe a seat cover) which is always very handy at any show.

I also one nearly came unstuck when I assembled my radio mic racks under a steeldeck stage and then one of the crew spilled a tin of watered-down paint that they were covering the stage with.

It sounds like in this instance the water really was going everywhere though Paul - I doubt any pre planning on how kit was laid out could have saved everything.

I'm guessing if the band's kit has been damaged, it'll be the venue's insurance that pays out?

Emergency equipment is always such a difficult one to mitigate against being misused - because you want it handy and easy to get to should the worst happen.

I guess the water wasn't particularly clean either?

[jonathanhill]

I've never known a drencher release to be situated in a random stairwell, almost all the ones I have encountered have been in the stage area, well away from the "interested" fingers of the kind of idiot who would pull a release valve to see...

There is often a set of controls remote from the stage, for obvious reasons.

[Junior8]

From the outside I would suspect somebody who knew what they were doing. You may have to go in that direction you don't want to - you may well be forced to.

[Gareth A]

This is why I like my old theatre - all safety and drencher released have a pin through them - exactly the same as the fire extinguishers. Still will never stop someone who wants to deliberately set it off, but does stop accidental releases which happened to me on a touring musical in a venue up north! LX1 flooded. . . lots of VL3000's soaked through. !

[paulears]

Well today I discover all my kit functions and apart from a couple of monitors I'm ok. The band were great and the pa company took it in good stead. I suspect most issues will be the electronics rack and the guitars once they've had time to dry. A few Mic's on cabs got soaked but the internal temperature is pretty high so by today mist things were dry. The pit with my amp racks was a bit waterlogged but only up to the tyres on the rack. We had a service recently and water wise it was not stagnant or dead pigeon bound. The amount of pressure needed to release the water at distance was considerable absolutely not an accident. The remote is at the bottom of the stairs next to a crash bar fire exit. I guess it will just be insurance now.

[adam2]

Electrical and electronic equipment that has got wet can SOMETIMES be saved by washing with clean tap water, and then a final rinse with distilled or de-ionised water. In many cases it is not the water itself that does the harm, but the rust, salts and minerals that are dissolved in the water and remain after drying out.

 

If dirty water is allowed to remain and dry out the equipment can be permanently damaged by corrosive and slightly conductive residues.

 

If instead the dirty water is washed out by purified water that leaves no residue, then the equipment MAY be serviceable after prolonged and gentle drying. MCBs and RCDs that have got wet should always be replaced.

 

 

 

[sandall]

The old BBC short-wave valve transmitters used distilled water for cooling, so had several kV across a column of water - if its anode got perforated the output valve would carry on working quite happily while full of water !!

[GridGirl]

Sounds distinctly like it wasn't a drunken punter to me. Having seen how much water comes out of a sprinkler head (long story!) I hate to think how much water came out of the drencher. I can report that Selecon Pacifics don't object to showers though - the lamp had to be replaced but other than that it was good as new...

[bruce]

I always think the word “sprinkler” is a complete misnomer - it gives the impression of a light mist of water. Here’s what happened when a van (2.1m high) tried to get into our basement car park at work, despite the “2m limit” sign... OK - its knocked the head off rather than triggered it, but you get the idea....