So a couple of phone calls later... the rumour mill grinds out that this was a multi-part failure - operator, design,
hoist not working. I have no way of knowing first
hand and my Vegas contacts were not on that show so consider this to be at least 4 degrees from Kevin Bacon.
That said, a year or so ago in out downtown
arena we had a heavy (lbs/tons,KG) and automation-centric (moving trusses dancing,
etc) show that had 1
hoist on the
mother grid hang up/not get
power/had non-functional control as they brought the
grid in. Fortunately the
hoist operator hit the Big Red
Button when the
truss broke, 60 feet in the air. It was loud and for those of us who Had a Frickin' Clue, scared us
downstage of the possible/likely "It's Raining
Truss" moment. The Weather Girls did not sing, but it took a long time for some of the local hands to move out of the Gravity Sucks Zone in spite of all we graybeards yelling at them to vacate the area. {/story repeat}
I hope to never be a part of such a situation again.
I've said this before - for the most part, there are no accidents, no random and completely unpredictable failure of adequately rated materials, when used and deployed in accordance with KNOWN engineering principles. These are ultimately *people* failures, whether they are from inadequate training, improper training, operator failure to fully and completely implement that training, design defects or improper material selection, or improper assembly/use/storage/transport, one or more persons made a deliberate decision to deviate from best practices. And "stuff" happened.