Toronto Stage Collapse

[dosxuk]

Initial reports on the BBC News website that one person has died at a stage collapse before a Radiohead concert in Toronto.

[Roderick]

From the CBC website:

CBC news

[heinz57]

Reports also state that three others were injured. One quite seriously. Others were treated and discharged at the scene.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18474835

 

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/16/12257113-toronto-stage-collapse-kills-1-before-scheduled-radiohead-concert?lite

 

No cause is yet known. Weather was calm with only light winds. Overloading on the roof structure maybe?

[woody2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znABuXFmlls

[sjb88]

No cause is yet known. Weather was calm with only light winds. Overloading on the roof structure maybe?

Or lack of maintenance of components, or failure to assemble it in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions... or, most likely, a combination of more than one of these.

 

These stage collapses seem to be becoming more frequent the last couple of years?

[dosxuk]

These stage collapses seem to be becoming more frequent the last couple of years?

 

Are the collapses becoming more frequent, or is our awareness of them growing? Ten years ago a stage collapse in Canada would probably have only made to the BBC News pages the following day (if at all). Tonight it was on the home page ticker in breaking news red.

[ramdram]

Having very recently taken more of an interest in all things rigging oriented...I happened across the Prolyte site:

 

http://issuu.com/prolyte_group/docs/prolyte_blackbook

 

They have a very informative (for me anyway) "Blackbook" online manual (with trendy options for virtual page turning and so forth).

 

Prolyte make mention that truss does NOT last forever and advise on when to scrap the stuff on a "your mileage may vary" basis. See Section 18, Page 89.

 

It occurs to me that perhaps the truss failures we read of in the press/see on TV, may in fact be time expired and was due for retirement the "gig" just before it collapsed.

 

Obviously this is speculation but possibly said truss failure really was a gig too far?

[Junior8]

There is a good set of pictures on the Toronto Star website. By the looks of it this was a scaff structure and the accident was a result of the failure of one side of the roof - formed of standard scaff trusses - where it joined the side supporting framework. I can't help feeling if people continue to hang eveything these incidents are going to keep happening. Edited June 17, 2012 by Junior8

[DZA Technical]

I read about this horrible tragedy on the news this morning, and wondered how long it would take for someone to consider it their duty to inform all the Blue Room members and readers.

 

Rather than speculating about 'how' this happened can we please take a moment to think of all those who were killed or injured, shocked or traumatised.

 

I very much doubt that this incident is due to any kind of neglect and must be written up for now as an horrific accident.

 

In the fullness of time you will be able to read an official, considered and informed report on 'how'.

[kerry davies]

Agreed that it is a tragedy, David, though if anything good comes out of this it will be the discussions on safety, structural engineering and raising the industry game to avoid these horrors.

 

Following Indianapolis the US production industry has gathered together and Indiana is leading the way by adopting our Purple Book and the IStructE guide on TDS until they can create one of their own.

 

Roderick is heavily involved in Australian moves to enhance structural safety and there is a point to these posts. If only one young Production Manager realises that he/she needs to get in a structural engineer and makes the budget available for that then this will have been a valuable thread.

 

In a "can-do" industry there needs to be a limit which sees the introduction of the "man-who-can" and the more that is reinforced the safer we will all be.

[brainwave-generator]

I read about this horrible tragedy on the news this morning, and wondered how long it would take for someone to consider it their duty to inform all the Blue Room members and readers.

 

Rather than speculating about 'how' this happened can we please take a moment to think of all those who were killed or injured, shocked or traumatised.

 

I very much doubt that this incident is due to any kind of neglect and must be written up for now as an horrific accident.

 

In the fullness of time you will be able to read an official, considered and informed report on 'how'.

 

Completely agree and it's something I always say. There is no place for speculating about what caused peoples deaths when you have no idea.

 

There are very few, if any, people on the Blue Room who actually have the technical knowledge and experience of working with temporary structures, to be able to simply look at a photo and say "that looks like a failure of such and such". The theory displayed here (and elsewhere on the internet) that "it wasn't caused by bad weather so it must have been overloaded" is ridiculous. To suggest that a stage could only collapse by means of weather of overloading is absurd and displays a thorough lack of understanding.

 

Somebody died here. He was somebody's child. And may have been somebody's parent too. And speculating over weather they were killed by a lack of competence or by a true accident is not appropriate. Think about how you would feel if your child / parent was killed in a car crash and an internet car forum started speculating about whether they were drinking or on drugs? When actually they may have just slipped on ice?

 

There is no place for it, there are no lessons to be learned from armchair expert speculation. As has been said, a team of engineers will write a thorough report in due course and you can read that until the cows come home. Remember Indiana? All the internet experts said it was an insufficient structure with insufficient ballast. The engineers verdict was that those things played a part but were by no means the limits.

[KidRay]

A tragedy indeed, and my thoughts are with the friends and family of those involved. I didn't know Scott (the technician who was killed) personally, but he was a friend of a friend, and there is much sadness in this little community of ours.

I do, however, disagree that we shouldn't be talking about it. There may be a degree of speculation, but we at the Blue Room are the people who are most likely to be directly involved in events of this kind as performers or technicians and I, for one, would like to be as sure as possible that my life is not at risk when I'm doing my job.

If this sort of thing can happen, as it seems to be doing more frequently recently, to bands and shows at the top of the profession who DO have the budget to do everything necessary to make things safe, it does raise serious concerns about safety when budgets are stretched for those of us working lower down the ladder.

 

If any of this makes one rigger/stage designer/safety officer etc. think twice, or double check something it will be worth it.

[Pete McCrea]

In full agreement that this is a tragedy. As others here and elsewhere have said, we don't go to work to die.

 

The Civil Engineer in me is interested in what caused this accident. It's a completely different type of structure to those involved in other recent events (and seldom seen in the UK), and sounds like weather was not a causal factor, so there's something else going on there. I await the official reports with interest.

[brainwave-generator]

A tragedy indeed, and my thoughts are with the friends and family of those involved. I didn't know Scott (the technician who was killed) personally, but he was a friend of a friend, and there is much sadness in this little community of ours.

I do, however, disagree that we shouldn't be talking about it. There may be a degree of speculation, but we at the Blue Room are the people who are most likely to be directly involved in events of this kind as performers or technicians and I, for one, would like to be as sure as possible that my life is not at risk when I'm doing my job.

If this sort of thing can happen, as it seems to be doing more frequently recently, to bands and shows at the top of the profession who DO have the budget to do everything necessary to make things safe, it does raise serious concerns about safety when budgets are stretched for those of us working lower down the ladder.

 

If any of this makes one rigger/stage designer/safety officer etc. think twice, or double check something it will be worth it.

 

Just because you work underneath stage roofs it doesn't give you the right to speculate who's to blame when one collapses.

 

Discussing it on here is not going to change the amount of risk you come under. You're not going to find stage riggers who couldn't care less who then change their ways and become super-considerate because they read about it on the flaming internet. Believe me when I say that working above peoples heads with heavy steelwork puts home how much responsibility we have far more strongly than reading it on the web.

[timd]

Discussing it on here is not going to change the amount of risk you come under. You're not going to find stage riggers who couldn't care less who then change their ways and become super-considerate because they read about it on the flaming internet. Believe me when I say that working above peoples heads with heavy steelwork puts home how much responsibility we have far more strongly than reading it on the web.

 

So what should we do? Censor all discussions of stage collapses because it's a topic that makes some people uncomfortable? Perhaps we should ban all discussion of rigging or power in case someone gets an idea into their heads and produces a dangerous installation? No, that would be ridiculous. As Kerry has said above, these threads may come to the attention of production managers and put to the front of their minds the safety issues involved in running an event, which can only be a good thing. What we're trying to promote generally is a culture of safety across the industry (and many other industries), and the only way to achieve that is by talking about safety. The safety of an event isn't just down to the riggers. Everyone has a role to play, however big or small, so anything we can do to raise their awareness of safety the better.

 

You may have rigged a perfectly appropriate stage, but then if the lighting and sound teams turn up with a different set of kit that weighs more, what do you do? Lets say the line array is changed last minute for one that weighs 20% more, but this information never makes it beyond the sound lot, who think it won't matter. Meanwhile, the lighting team bring a few extra movers, and all the movers weigh a bit more than expected because they're a magnetic ballasted lot cross-hired from another company, and no-one on site is even aware that it's happened. At the same time, the video wall manufacturer's data sheet contains an error in the wind loading factors to be applied. Who's now to blame that the structure's overloaded and potentially unsafe? None of the mistakes were made by riggers, they were made by people who wouldn't normally consider rigging safety, and that's the issue. You may know exactly how dangerous temporary structures can be, but does everyone else?