techieman33
Well-Known Member
Pictures: http://imgur.com/gallery/3jlld/new
Originalpost on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/comments/2qlfo6/guess_what_happens_when_a_fly_is_around_125_lbs/
Arbor crash with pics from reddit
- Thread startertechieman33
- Start date
Pictures: http://imgur.com/gallery/3jlld/new
Originalpost on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/comments/2qlfo6/guess_what_happens_when_a_fly_is_around_125_lbs/
de27192
Active Member
That part really annoys me. Everyone makes mistakes now and then, if you can't hold your hands up and say "sorry that was me" then you're not fit to work in this environment.
HOWEVER, moreover, if the technical director has so little control over the get out that he doesn't know who is in loading bridge and who is on the rail... then I'd question whether he's fit to work in that environment either. If you're in a state where you've got an assortment of people running round using the fly system willy nilly with no control, of course there will be accidents. You're supposed to control that.
The fact that nobody knows who was controlling a lineset - either the tech admitting it, or the TD knowing at all.. is worrying; and that kind of lacklustre approach to flys is not tolerable.
de27192
Active Member
Ah yes read again, it does sound like weights removed at stage level. You should still have a method of managing this. Lifting operations can be dangerous and if controlling people working on flys when the bars are dead out is too much work for one TD, then a flyman to assist should be appointed. Whilst you have heavy bars over peoples heads there should never be a situation where any man and his dog can just get stuck in and start pulling weights out, you are asking for trouble.
This is also why I was taught you always ALWAYS wear gloves when running counterweight flies. Your instinct (baring tons of training at least) will be to grab the line... gloves will help keep your hands from getting torn off. Also with gloves it's possible to use friction to slow a lineset and in most cases if an imbalance is less than your weight hold it until help arrives (been there, done that, wish I knew who effed up the weighting).
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
I know of a few instances where someone held on and bought the farm when they hit something on the way up.
DuckJordan
Touring IATSE Member
de27192
Active Member
I think this depends on your influences when learning etc... I come from a stage engineering (design/manufacture/install) background and my instinct when I see anything moving out of control is to keep my fingers as far from the moving parts as physically possible. Working with saws, grinders, etc as well as stage machinery, it's just engrained that moving things and fingers don't mix and thus that's my instinct.
As an aside - the glove argument is debatable too. An advantage of wearing gloves is of course that a rope burn is much less likely if you do instinctively grab a rope or even just mis-handle it. However on the contrary, gloves being a stronger material than skin means that if some kind of sharp edge or debris from the counterweight system were to snag in your glove, it could pull it. In the best case scenario, that would mean you lose your glove. In a worse case scenario, it would pull your arm in. And worse still it could pull your body inwards, which means shoulders and yes, then your head, towards the moving parts. And I don't need to explain why that's bad. With bare skin, yes you'll get a nasty cut or burn, but there's much less potential for anything to snag or get caught that could drag your limbs into the moving parts of the system, which, with a bit of momentum, could easily kill you.
Amiers
Renting to Corporate One Fixture at a Time.
After reading the comments on the reddit I am glad nobody got hurt. Looking at the pictures I wonder if the safety weight is for the baton and the added weight was for the curtain track and whatever else was on there and they just didn't have any other bricks left*shrug*. 7 @ 25 for the baton and 26 @ 25 ( yellow and black bricks) is a lot of weight not to take off after taking everything off but the track. I would be very curious as to know what else was on the pipe.
porkchop
Well-Known Member
There are quite a few issues obviously, not the least of which is why there isn't enough supervision of the loading rail. But a few things that are less obvious come to mind rapidly:
In the first picture there appears to be batten weight banded onto the bottom of the arbors (probably a good idea), but on top of that there are more yellow bricks. I obviously don't know the theatre's policies, but this seems like it could easily cause confusion. I can see how the addition of curtain track or some other system that could be considered semi-permanent might make a TD want to change your batten weight to include that system, but if you're going to add weight to the batten that should not removed either reband it or don't have any banding on the arbor at all. Either way there should be no situation where you have bricks marked the same as your permanent ones that are normally removed and you should also not have different systems marking bricks as permanent, especially not on the same arbor.
There are only two spreader bars on the arbor. Is that really all it's designed for? Was the top spreader plate with the stopper used properly after the arbor was unloaded? Originally I had several more rhetorical questions typed out, but they made too many assumptions to include.
The worst part in my mind is that in the kid's comment after a lot of the same questions we're asking he continues to try any point blame and defend current practices rather than discuss ways to prevent this from happening in the future:
You wonder why the offending person won't fess up. This is not just their fault. It's a problem of how things are done in that theatre. There was a situation where someone would eventually fail, they just happened to be the one to do it.
In the first picture there appears to be batten weight banded onto the bottom of the arbors (probably a good idea), but on top of that there are more yellow bricks. I obviously don't know the theatre's policies, but this seems like it could easily cause confusion. I can see how the addition of curtain track or some other system that could be considered semi-permanent might make a TD want to change your batten weight to include that system, but if you're going to add weight to the batten that should not removed either reband it or don't have any banding on the arbor at all. Either way there should be no situation where you have bricks marked the same as your permanent ones that are normally removed and you should also not have different systems marking bricks as permanent, especially not on the same arbor.
There are only two spreader bars on the arbor. Is that really all it's designed for? Was the top spreader plate with the stopper used properly after the arbor was unloaded? Originally I had several more rhetorical questions typed out, but they made too many assumptions to include.
The worst part in my mind is that in the kid's comment after a lot of the same questions we're asking he continues to try any point blame and defend current practices rather than discuss ways to prevent this from happening in the future:
You wonder why the offending person won't fess up. This is not just their fault. It's a problem of how things are done in that theatre. There was a situation where someone would eventually fail, they just happened to be the one to do it.
In the original post the kid says that someone got skin ripped off and rope burns, but that he's "very glad that nobody got hurt". Um, hello! That's an injury, one often serious enough to require hospital visits. That pretty much tells me all I need to know about the culture of that place.
Also, do I detected a bit of KOTB Syndrome from that guy?
Also, do I detected a bit of KOTB Syndrome from that guy?
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
Seems to be about a 6' arbor and a plate every 2' seems correct. Don't know if they were spaced that way when it crashed. Interesting to note the steel banding apparently didn't survive though no telling in the after arbor photo what has been done. I have trouble believing those cables all failed. Surprised a little by Crosbies because it does look a lot like SECOA and they rarely don't use nico press sleaves, at least on 1/4" lines. More facts needed, but clearly operator error.
The cables are suspicious to me also. I wonder if the arbor didn't break loose, just the weight. The cables look like they may have been cut to remove the dangling arbor after the fact?
Even if 8 cables couldn't hold the falling of 125lbs, the shear pattern would look a lot different. Op describes falling pulleys, which to me implies the cable held, and ripped them down.
It bothers me a little that this system seems to top out on 1 side of the arbor, instead of center or both sides. I think the arbor may have held the weight if it wasn't racked so badly at the top. I suppose at that point, it was all coming down anyway, run for your life... Thank God all are alive.
Even if 8 cables couldn't hold the falling of 125lbs, the shear pattern would look a lot different. Op describes falling pulleys, which to me implies the cable held, and ripped them down.
It bothers me a little that this system seems to top out on 1 side of the arbor, instead of center or both sides. I think the arbor may have held the weight if it wasn't racked so badly at the top. I suppose at that point, it was all coming down anyway, run for your life... Thank God all are alive.
epimetheus
Well-Known Member
I bet the TD is just thrilled this got posted online. Looks to me (a very uneducated eye when it comes to rigging) like the arbor was removed from the system after the runaway for the pic with the kid holding it. I would expect the cables to be frayed more if they were sheared/cut/whatever as a result of the incident. Shouldn't everything have been shut down and dropped where it was for an investigation before further action was taken?
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
Yes - I concur - it would have been more instructive if they had left it as it was - but no knowing if that left a dangerous condition and cutting it down was the best choice. Sure which I'd seen a block falling. Last I heard of an actual destructive test of a typical 500 or 750 pound rated loft block failed around 100,000 pounds. Also, when a wire rope fails, it's almost always at the clip - right tight too it - because only if a couple of percent t it's the weakest point.
As far as "...top out on 1 side of the arbor, instead of center or both sides...", that is how a batten heavy run away fails - they hit the top stop and the guide side stops, and the rest parallelograms. Arbor heavy usually deforms the lock rail.
Feels like there is a lot more to this.
ptero
Active Member
Regarding the photo of the undamaged arbor: My impression (assumption) is that it does NOT show the one that was destroyed. I take it to be of an undamaged arbor for illustration purposes. I stumble on how and why such a good shot exists of the damaged one from before the event. With that assumption, we're just guessing how the destroyed one was loaded and banded.
What Rigger?
I'm so fly....I Neverland.
We actually had cast cable clips on our SECOA system that were replaced about 10-12 years ago with forged. Not sure why they went that route, but I'd heard there were contractors that did a lot of the final install, maybe just ignored what SECOA spec'd?
