Actor In Christmas Pageant Dies After 25 Foot Fall

[Eboy87]

I saw this story while perusing the news this morning, after reading the threads about flying people. An actor who was being flown died after she fell. No word on whether it was a jerry-rigged or professional. I'm assuming the later.

Here's the story.

[derekleffew]

Slightly more detailed story from a Cincinnati TV station: Updated: Woman Injured In Fall During Christmas Show Dies - Local News Story - WLWT Cincinnati, and the obligatory statement from the venue: Awaited Statement :: About Crossroads.

edit: More sketchy details: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/2...0096/1055/NEWS.

edit: It just keeps getting worse. From http://www.local12.com/content/break...rXReykeYg.cspx.

Police say she was wearing a safety harness, which failed but officials don't know why that happened. Church officials say Shryock was an experienced rope performer and instructor. OSHA does not have jurisdiction to investigate because no one participating in the performance was paid. The police now have possession of the harness and will try to determine whether the fall was caused by equipment malfunction or human error.

[Footer]

I am saying many expletives to myself, and would put them here if I could, but this is just stupid. This should not have happened. If people knew what they were doing, even common fall protection procedures would have stopped this. This was not an accident in my opinion. This was negligence and should be prosecuted as such, even manslaughter could be and should be considered. There was no reason for this person to die. Its one thing when a rigger falls because they were to stupid to clip in, its another thing all together when you trust your life in the hands of others and they fail you.

I know this same thing happens in churches in this area.

[lieperjp]

Why one should always use properly rated harnesses:

The harness has a warning label which says it should only be used for repelling or rock climbing.

[Van]

This is why Churches should leave the Theatrics to Theatres!
I'm with Footer. This was not an accident and more than the moron with a blank gun putting it against his head and pulling the trigger this was someone elses negligennce. Hell I'd love to see what they were rigged too. Think they just tied onto lighting points ?

[Footer]

Originally Posted by Van

Hell I'd love to see what they were rigged too. Think they just tied onto lighting points ?

Looks to be just a petzl style sit harness and from what I can tell a single point holding her up. The sad thing is that myself, and probably a number of people on here, have a 5 point harness in their car or within reach. It is obvious that whoever did this has not clue as to what they are doing. I have a feeling it was someone with rock climbing experience and rigged it as such. Anyone even remotely theatre related would never put someone in a rock climbing harness.

Basicly... what this comes down to....

[Delete expletive] idiots.


Oh... and this is from the Crossroads Church website....

Serve Within

Want to know what makes Crossroads happen? Volunteers.

Thousands of them, doing everything from holding babies and building sets, to leading our big ReachOut events. It’s all important, and it’s all done by average Crossroads people. And yes, we need you.

Register and see all the ways to serve and get connected.

http://mfile.akamai.com/12885/wmv/vo...12882.200k.asx


Anyone else for a road trip?? I am off work tomorrow until the 5th.

[derekleffew]

It can never be said too often, or too strenuously: What is it about the holidays that cause normal people to lose their minds?

Ignorance should be prosecutable, the same as negligence.

[renegadeblack]

Originally Posted by Footer

Anyone even remotely theatre related would never put someone in a rock climbing harness.

Anyone remotely theatre related would have hired professionals to come and install the rig.

It's quite sad, a life could have been saved with a phone call.

[What Rigger?]

Before we jump to any conclusions (myself included):

IF the point she was on failed, that's one thing. As we've all said before, rigging should be done only by those qualified (and that's real easy for us to say at this point).

On the other hand: IF she was on a Spanish Web, you've opened a whole 'nuther can of worms.IF she was harnessed, she couldn't have been on a Web. Acrobatics, such as Spanish Web, silk/tissue acts, etc...seem to function in a slightly parallel universe. Fall protection is not used, generally, because the fall protection is more of a hazard than NOT using fall protection in these situations. Fall protection is, generally, not designed for this use and as such cannot function properly. Believe it or not (and I'm sort of loathe to mention this here), there are written, completely legal times to not use fall protection. But no way in h3ll am I gonna tell anyone here where/when that is. And it doesn't generally make it a good idea either. That's why you need to be trained in these things by legit sources.
In acrobatics, people fall. It's a fact of life, and a known risk going into it. Ask that performer at Zumanity who came down hard a few months ago. Ask the Wallendas who lost one of theirs in a tight rope walk.

{from www.wallendas.com}It was during a promotional walk in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March, 1978, that the patriarch of the Great Wallendas fell to his death at age 73. Not because of his age or capabilities, not because of the wind, but because of several misconnected guy ropes along the wire. Karl once said, "Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting." The Wallenda legacy lives on to the sixth and seventh generations through Karl's grandchildren and great-grandchildren

Until anything official comes out, we have to reserve judgement or jumping to conclusions. I'd be willing to bet a week's pay that it's not so cut and dry. But I've been wrong before.

[TimMiller]

When i heard the news tonight my stomach cringed. I just got done wrapping up a show that had teh cirque desole style in which we had aerialests flying around. The big thing with our show was that it was done by professionals, professional aerialests, and professional riggers who specialize in these types of high risk stunts. I had to completely move around my lighting positions due to the possibilities of something happen. If there was a possibility of something happening such as rope getting wraped around an instrument or truss, we would move it.

Always remember gear can be replaced, people cannot. I heard on the news i was reading it was a failure in the connection between the rope and the D ring on her harness which first thing that came to my mind was that it was not a propper caribeaner nor was it a locking one which is a must when flying. The company that we used used locking ones in which you had to depress a button before spinning the sleave to then be able to unclip it.

For anyone looking we used Aerial Experience Productions

They are a very nice bunch of people with lots of professional experience.