Yeah, I've seen all the armchair engineers over there.
Stage rigging collapses at Indiana State Fair
- Thread starterzmb
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shiben
Well-Known Member
And i mean the dude is sort of right. I dont care how strong you make it, you still have a very large piece of fabric on top of some very thin towers, and wind is incredibly powerful. The fact that most of the discussion on LN involves "why was it not lowered" Indicates to me that it is indeed a house of cards in the up position, really not designed for such high wind speed.
DuckJordan
Touring IATSE Member
I've said it before but I'll say it again. Why not put release points for the roof fabric. To me there would have been a lot less force applied to the stage had the roof been able to quickly and safely been "canvased", I can't be the first one to think this and to me it screams improvement. Why is the industry so stubborn against changes? While, I may be over reacting a bit I feel that there shouldn't be an issue with adding a simple release mechanism to the tarp.
The discussion about this incident on the SML is approaching 100 emails, and this very question has been brought up a number of times. Not to say that we can't/shouldn't discuss it here, but there are some very interesting points being raised over there that you (or others) might find interesting.
I was contacted by the AP this morning along with a few other CB members. The reporter was asking specific questions pertaining to how the industry is viewing this incident and what standards body does the industry follow. Here is the article: Safety questions loom over Indiana stage collapse - Boston.com
Its being carried nationally.
Its being carried nationally.
Makes sense, but what happens to that fabric/plastic/canvas once it's released. It goes flying over onto the crowd? I doubt you'll get too may people liking that, either.
DuckJordan
Touring IATSE Member
A few unhappy possibly minor injuries compared to a major collapse with major injuries and possibly death? I'll go with the pissed off people...
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Until it hits the ferris wheel, knocking that over and taking out the building of 4H kids staying inside protecting their prized pigs. There is no perfect solution.
And speaking of ferris wheels... with this storm you heard no word of anything on the midway or any other issues at the fair. So, a 100' tall ferris wheel... that is portable... and put together by carnies stayed together but the stage put together by stagehands fell apart? Really, we can't do better then carnies? With this it might be time to consider stagehands rank in the world compared to carnies.
techieman33
Well-Known Member
The ferris wheel doesn't have a giant sail either
Because if it did... it would tip over. Once again, the carnies got us on that one. I'm sure they would love to use all that space to advertise 9 dollar slices of pizza.
You put giant sails into the sky, the sky is going to play with them.
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And speaking of ferris wheels... with this storm you heard no word of anything on the midway or any other issues at the fair. So, a 100' tall ferris wheel... that is portable... and put together by [-]carnies[/-]a traveling fair crew stayed together but the stage put together by stagehands fell apart? Really, we can't do better then [-]carnies[/-] a traveling fair crew? With this it might be time to consider stagehands rank in the world compared to [-]carnies[/-]a traveling fair crew.
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Really, guys? THIS is what we're arguing over? We have a real opportunity to have a conversation about safety and the responsibilities involved in keeping both crew and audience safe and we're arguing over whether "carny" is PC?
The real question we need to be discussing is how this horrible tragedy that ended in five deaths is going to affect or change the way we do outdoor shows in order to prevent things like this happening in the future?
"funfair employee"
Anyway, sorry to take that off topic. Back to topic.
If I haven't said it already, this entire event makes me more angry than it does sad, and it makes me pretty sad. What are we, as an industry, going to do about it, after we are doing pointing fingers and playing armchair engineer?
Anyway, sorry to take that off topic. Back to topic.
If I haven't said it already, this entire event makes me more angry than it does sad, and it makes me pretty sad. What are we, as an industry, going to do about it, after we are doing pointing fingers and playing armchair engineer?
It says that the roof was able to move up and down. I am still not sure that is entirely true. With a video wall or sound hung on the wings, I can't see it coming down. That is the downside to the Thomas type roofs. With a Mountain Stage, the video wall can still make bringing the roof impossible, the footprint is so much bigger it can withstand much more weather. It still is necessary to open scrims and condoms.
The decision to send the spot ops up was rediculous. Even if you wanted to ride the weather, you don't put guys in the air. I think promotors need to have in festival settings. better awareness of what they are asking guys to do. Also acts need to be more willing to pare their shows down
The decision to send the spot ops up was rediculous. Even if you wanted to ride the weather, you don't put guys in the air. I think promotors need to have in festival settings. better awareness of what they are asking guys to do. Also acts need to be more willing to pare their shows down
shiben
Well-Known Member
Now I am not an engineer or anything, but I was having a beer with a good friend and mentor today at a restaurant with outdoor seating. The umbrella had venting to prevent IT from flying off when the wind gusted. Now Im just guessing (again, not an expert) that something like that might be able to be engineered for a stage roof? I cant even imagine how much it costs to have a stage collapse in the first place (in terms of damaged gear and whatnot), much less people dying. Would some thought not be placed into making it not collapse in the event of a freak storm? I guess this confuses me, even say you get a micro-burst or something, actually get freak weather, would the cost of replacing a giant thing like that not have justified in the past making these things easy to vent wind? I guess if umbrella makers are doing it to save a cheap bar umbrella, I would have thought a very expensive stage would have been a top priority...
David Ashton
Well-Known Member
As the roofs are giant sails, might it not be sensible to adapt some very old and proven technology, namely the roller furling sail system to stage roofs, having sat out a hurricane in the Atlantic using sail furlers I can say they are simple, cheap, quick and reliable as a method to reduce the sail area.They could be easily modified to be operated off 12 batteries so as to be usable even with power failure situations,Should I patent this idea?
Thomas Engineering (the type of room it was) has specs as to how the roof should be set up, secured and all the load/wind bearing the structure can take. The company I work for during the summer has several Thomas Roofs, not quite as large as this one, but one of our guys rattles off numbers about the roofs all the time, so the information is somewhere.
As far as the roof being able to move, besides the PA/video wall. If you look at some of the up close pictures of the towers you can see 2 roller beams on a tower making a cross. The lower one is for the chain motor when lifting/raising, the upper appears to be a heavy yellow ratchet strap. As per Thomas when the roof is at height it is to be secured with a strap as a safety. This would make lowering the roof impossible until the straps were removed.
From Thomas' Tower instructions
13. Once the rig is at show trim a safety should be fitted. A 2000 - 3000 Kg (4000- 6614 LBS)
truck ratchet strap or spanset is suitable (unless fireworks or pyro are used). This must be
fitted tightly around the top of the roller beam and the sleeve block. Any slack could result in
the safety being ineffective; in the event of a chain failure, the block would drop before any
weight would be taken.
As far as the roof being able to move, besides the PA/video wall. If you look at some of the up close pictures of the towers you can see 2 roller beams on a tower making a cross. The lower one is for the chain motor when lifting/raising, the upper appears to be a heavy yellow ratchet strap. As per Thomas when the roof is at height it is to be secured with a strap as a safety. This would make lowering the roof impossible until the straps were removed.
From Thomas' Tower instructions
13. Once the rig is at show trim a safety should be fitted. A 2000 - 3000 Kg (4000- 6614 LBS)
truck ratchet strap or spanset is suitable (unless fireworks or pyro are used). This must be
fitted tightly around the top of the roller beam and the sleeve block. Any slack could result in
the safety being ineffective; in the event of a chain failure, the block would drop before any
weight would be taken.
Yes. However, without knowing every piece of gear that is going in the air, how those pieces of gear interact with the structure, and the direction of wind etc there is really not an easy way to say what the wind load is that the structure can safely take. I am sure you could do that in a computer model with just the roof sitting on a flat field. I'm sure there are engineers building an exact model of the structure with everything hanging right now to do simulations to figure out exactly what happened and why. Just like designing a stage deck you always have to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Someone can always drive a genie lift across the stage, so you either need to do two things: prevent that from happening or build strong enough to take the weight.
This is a brief writeup on this roof giving you size and weight handling capabilitys:
I'm in no way saying that what this company was doing was unsafe. They worked with the manufacture to add capabilities to the roof. This write up does however give you some scale to the size of show they were putting in.
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