I am a high school technical director, and I must say that this is a very informative thread, one that I will be sharing with my students when class starts in less than an hour.
That being said, I've left school for the ER three times, twice in an ambulance. The first two (both with the flashing lights) were due to my back going out and locking up so bad I couldn't walk or even sit up to ride in a car. Both of those were a week after our all school musical which I had been working 12-16 hour days on to get the set done in time, and my hip had gotten out of alignment and just finally locked up, wouldn't work any more. Neither time was I lifting anything heavy, or even wrong, in fact the first time I merely bent over to walk under a
platform.
The third trip to the ER my wife happened to have stuck around after a show to help
strike, (most likely because she was hungry and wanted to go out to eat afterward) which was a rare occurrence, and I'm grateful that she did. About half an hour into
strike, after one of my students finished using a 10
foot ladder to clip some light duty hanging wires, I went to move the ladder to my next task and suddenly felt searing pain in my
face and dropped the ladder yelling "G*D D@MM!T (name of student), WHAT THE H3LL DID YOU LEAVE ON TOP OF THE LADDER!?!?!?". Surprisingly all work stopped immediately (you can yell "HOLD THE WORK" as many times as you like, and the drills keep moving, but yell one profanity, and everyone stops cold) as everyone turned to see me clapping my
hand over my left eye and blood gushing out from between my fingers. My wife ran up to the
stage to help me off of the
platform I was on (about 57" high... yes, the 10' ladder was on top of a 57"
platform), just praying that I didn't remove my
hand from my eye while all of my students (one of them a 4th grader... it was "Frankenstein" and he was playing the younger brother) and a lot of their parents were watching, because she just KNEW that my eye was gone. Luckily the 8 INCH DIAGONAL
WIRE CUTTERS only caught me in the eyebrow, and then bounced and hit be twice in the nose. Nearly broke my nose, caused lots of blood, but no permanent injury. Facial scars are B@D @S$, right? At least my wife thinks so.
Ironically, this is the show that I posted a question about in the rigging thread last fall asking how one goes about rigging a
trap door for a hanging (with noose)
effect. Also the same show we hired a professional rigging company to fly a
platform with an actor 14' into the air. No injuries, or accidental hangings occurred during the course of the show or its construction, just one major one at
strike.
On another side note, our all school musical closed this past weekend, and I have already been to the chiropractor to make sure everything is aligned to avoid that next trip to the ER.