Backstage Rigging Accident Injures Student, 17

philhaney

philhaney

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TARPON SPRINGS, FL - A 17-year-old student at East Lake High School here sustained a head injury April 14 while dismantling a set for a production of Peter Pan. The student had been reportedly hoisted more than 30 feet in the air in a rigging malfunction and his head struck an object on the way up. Firefighters rushed to the scene and helped the student as he made his way down from a catwalk. After onsite treatment at the school, the student was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

http://www.plsn.com/news/21-news/13211-backstage-rigging-accident-injures-student-17.html
 
A 100' high high school stage? Entangled? in a hand line? He got to a catwalk? Reminds me of an incident in a school district where they wanted all motorized rigging because of an incident on a district stage with counterweight system. Seems the students had a game of "arbor surfing", like elevator surfing in high rises - jumping from the top of one elevator car to the adjacent car as they were passing. I could see entanglement is possible when hopping back and forth between arbors.

Where's Paul Harvey when you want to know the rest of the story..............
 
We have a High School where all flybars were removed with fixed rigging put in place. It is not desirable but the kids were known to ride the lines. It is very hard to have full supervision of a high school space at all times.
 
Here is the rest of the story, found this over at LN.

From Tom Stanziano's facebook, He is a Phillips rep

Tom Stanziano Jr | Facebook

I have seen some scary stuff during my career bit none as scary as today. While loading out a high school production, a student was hurt due to the incompetence of the rigger. While I waited for my turn to take lights down. The flying company stripped all of the steel and ropes off the battens. And then..... Yep the student released the brake and up he went as the weighted arbor came crashing down. Some how he managed to hang on even after cracking his head on the arbor until we were able to get to him and pull him to safety.

After 4 hours, 7 rescue units including Tech Rescue, they lower him to safety.

After all that the rigger had the balls to blame the kid saying "he's 18, he should know better. They do this all the time."

No Mr rigger, they don't do this all the time. Your are correct he's 18 and in High School. You are supposed to be the professional and supposed to know better!

We are to teach the youth so accidentally like this don't needlessly happen. So disappointed in this "professional".

Please remember when working with volunteers and students they do not know what they are doing 90% of the time. We need to teach them and keep them safe.

Sorry for my rant. Most important thing is the student will be okay.
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He is not releasing the name of the rigging company involved. I assume that because he mentioned flying company it is one of the big 3, but I could be wrong on that one.
 
Thanks for sharing that. Interesting to find out that this wasn't really the students fault, but was the professionals. Just goes to show that there is a reason why safety in the theater ALWAYS comes first. Thank goodness the boy survived.

Hopefully whichever company this was can survive the ensuing lawsuit, and ensure safe practices in the future.
 
Strange, I wonder who it was. Zfx does not take the equipment down, the users do. We just did PP at a local HS and we were required to dismantle the equipment. We were trained over a three day period, the first day was the load in and training on how to unload the battens and disassemble/pack after. The other two were daily safety inspections, equipment checks and adjustments, and actual flight training and choreography. We've used Zfx twice in the last 5 years and I have nothing but positive experiences with them. Totally professional.
 
Lburners said:
We have a High School where all flybars were removed with fixed rigging put in place. It is not desirable but the kids were known to ride the lines. It is very hard to have full supervision of a high school space at all times.
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Agree to disagree on this one.
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Just put a padlock through all of these and you are good to go. I went 2.5 years without anyone even touching the fly rail without my permission. Stress safety and scare the students into not messing around. It also helps if the school hires an auditorium manager to keep the room secure and guidance remembers to lock the doors after they give a tour :wall:
 
We include padlocks - cable locks actually - in our projects - but relying on a rope lock to hold an arbor that is sufficiently out of balance to "fly" an 18 year old is also not acceptable.

I also repeatedly stress "let go - do not hold on" in training. Too many people do hold on and suffer serious injuries or in at least one case I know of death. That gallery at 20' when you going up fast was a killer. Based on anecdotes, it would not surprise me if more injuries were caused by holding onto the hand line of a runaway set than any other single manual counterweight event.
 
Can't believe he held on the whole ride up, must have grip of steel. Shocked to see that no law suit will be coming out of this either.

This is why I stress all communication between everyone on load outs. I may now use this as yet another teaching tool for my space.
 
What's unclear to me is if the rigger is at fault or if the flying company is. Did someone instruct a rigger on the loading bridge to strip the weight before the flying company stripped the pipe, or did the flying company begin stripping stripping the pipe without anyone telling the loading bridge to remove the weight?

Was someone even on the loading bridge at the time to strip the weight? If not, could someone have mistakenly called up for weight to be stripped without someone up there to do it?

Not sure we'll get any of these questions answered, but I'm not sure at this time who to assign fault to based on the limited information available on what happened.


As for the ability to lock out rope locks. I've found it quite a handy feature. Whenever deemed appropriate, I'd put an actual lock on these when safety was a factor. I'd also use them frequently with span pins. They worked great for locking out sets already put at trim without putting an actual lock on the set. Much more convenient than a real lock when you're trying to avoid the nuisance of someone inadvertently moving your borders after you've set them.

Doesn't appear a lock would've been appropriate/practical in this situation though as they were actively moving things around. What this situation needed was better supervision from someone watching out for what was happening on the ground, the lock rail, and loading bridge.
 
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While a search of the web can help find out which company was in charge of the flying effect, it does not yield all of the information. As with all accidents, speculation can be dangerous. We can certainly discuss ways of preventing accidents and discuss hypothetical situations on what may have happened, but we should always stop at the point where blame could be placed. Communication and training is often at fault as no one intends for there to be injury or damage.
 
ruinexplorer said:
While a search of the web can help find out which company was in charge of the flying effect, it does not yield all of the information. As with all accidents, speculation can be dangerous. We can certainly discuss ways of preventing accidents and discuss hypothetical situations on what may have happened, but we should always stop at the point where blame could be placed. Communication and training is often at fault as no one intends for there to be injury or damage.
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I disagree. Fault can be placed. It was negligence that let this occur. Not sure who's, but there is always someone at fault. Be it the person who did not do the correct training or the person who let things get into a condition that they could no longer control. Its simple rigging. I'm not placing blame on Hall, but, if their flight director was present on the out it really puts a ding in my book for them no matter if they were at fault or not. IF they were in the room, they were the highest trained people/person in the space that should have seen an unsafe situation and fixed it. If you have not heard bricks moving after being asked to drop weight, figure out why. Don't touch the load until you get a clear from the loading rail. Its 1st day stuff.
 
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Doesn't matter if you hear clang or not, You don't touch the pipe until the flyman or the bridge give a pipe clear with the pipe number. It may be to wanting out to go faster that this happened. Either way I see Hall doing a very thorough training process over this event.
 
Footer said:
I disagree. Fault can be placed. It was negligence that let this occur. Not sure who's, but there is always someone at fault.
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No need to disagree. Of course there is fault, otherwise it would be intentional and not an accident. However, with the limited amount of knowledge that we have on the interwebs, it is often too quick for members of the community to speculate fault. The fault could have been of the victim. He could have been instructed what to do which is why the comment had been made about him being responsible. It could have been negligence of multiple individuals. Of course many of us also know that HS students can often believe that they know more than what they do and can act accordingly. This is one reason I do not always wish to work directly with them. They can do stupid things (not their fault, blame society or hormones or whatever).

Being someone who has been interviewed many times, I know firsthand how poorly journalists represent facts that they do not understand, theater related or not. This is why I always encourage taking what they say with a grain of salt.
 
Well said @ruinexplorer we know a student was standing near a line set which ran away. The student could have been told: Stand here, don't stand here, release the rope lock, whatever you do Don't release the rope lock, hold onto this rope so it doesn't run away, don't ever touch this rope if it does run away, it could be someone was about to yell at him get away from there, or it could be no one noticed he was even there and he decided on his own to try to be a hero. There are MANY things that could have been said (or not) right before the runaway which completely change the story. Without knowing those tiny details guessing anything about the blame on the student, the staff at the school, or the Hall flight director is irresponsible on our part.

Footer said:
I'm not placing blame on Hall, but, if their flight director was present on the out it really puts a ding in my book for them no matter if they were at fault or not. IF they were in the room, they were the highest trained people/person in the space that should have seen an unsafe situation and fixed it. If you have not heard bricks moving after being asked to drop weight, figure out why. Don't touch the load until you get a clear from the loading rail. Its 1st day stuff.
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OR the Hall flight director may have done everything humanly possible to keep this load out safe and Crazy Jimmy just decided to do something stupid because he thought it would be fun to fly. We just don't know what happened so it's not fare to Hall to "ding" them if they were at fault or not.

We will get the details eventually... we always do and when we do, we can talk about who screwed up from an educated prospective.
 
philhaney said:
TARPON SPRINGS, FL - A 17-year-old student at East Lake High School here sustained a head injury April 14 while dismantling a set for a production of Peter Pan. The student had been reportedly hoisted more than 30 feet in the air in a rigging malfunction and his head struck an object on the way up. Firefighters rushed to the scene and helped the student as he made his way down from a catwalk. After onsite treatment at the school, the student was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

PLSN
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Scary stuff!, Train your kids on the 4 K's most important thing is to KEEP YOUR WEIGHT DOWN!!!!
 
And do NOT try to stop a runaway, EVER!
 
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