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Pollstar: Investigators say weakened, century-old cloth and plaster ties caused a partial ceiling collapse that injured almost 80 audience members at London’s Apollo Theatre.
Whoa. This is crazy. I wonder why people didn't check on this kind of thing before. Old buildings should be refurbished at least every 20 years or so, so that the wood and materials don't rot away. Has this theatre never been redone? I hope they will know. I'm glad that they are allowed to open back up after that many people getting injured. Usually when accidents happen, places aren't allowed to reopen their doors in case more problems occur. They probably did a full theatre safety search after this happened, right?
J.R. Clancy recommends that your rigging gets inspected every year. And here is an example why. Building and rigging inspections are really important because at some point in the last 100 years, someone should have inspected the building, seen the cloth ceiling ties, and said "no more" until real ties were installed. It's lucky that this was a fairly small and localized disaster, but this is why we should inspect everything.
I'm honestly surprised that this doesn't happen more often. Many theaters in use today are at least decades old if not centuries and I would imagine that most of the building elements would begin to deteriorate overtime. I also would imagine that a lot of theaters probably don't have a lot of extra money laying around to get their building inspected and repaired.
This is a perfect example why building's should be inspected regularly. The bottom line is stuff deteriorates over time and its essentially a ticking time bomb waiting to come crashing down. In response to Hunter's comment I would imagine this does not happen often because many old historic theatres are required to get inspected to prevent this type of tragedy from occurring. When they find something structurally wrong with a building they are required to fix it or else face it being condemned.
I'm wondering if cloth ties in plaster disintegrating over time is a common problem or not. It's easy for us, in hindsight, to say "of course these should have been inspected!" but 100 years is not that old in building years, especially in London, home to buildings that go back to the Middle Ages. Clearly, this type of plastering process should be inspected, but I think it's a little extreme to suggest a complete overhaul of what could be a sound building some predetermined number of years.
5 comments:
Whoa. This is crazy. I wonder why people didn't check on this kind of thing before. Old buildings should be refurbished at least every 20 years or so, so that the wood and materials don't rot away. Has this theatre never been redone? I hope they will know. I'm glad that they are allowed to open back up after that many people getting injured. Usually when accidents happen, places aren't allowed to reopen their doors in case more problems occur. They probably did a full theatre safety search after this happened, right?
J.R. Clancy recommends that your rigging gets inspected every year. And here is an example why. Building and rigging inspections are really important because at some point in the last 100 years, someone should have inspected the building, seen the cloth ceiling ties, and said "no more" until real ties were installed. It's lucky that this was a fairly small and localized disaster, but this is why we should inspect everything.
I'm honestly surprised that this doesn't happen more often. Many theaters in use today are at least decades old if not centuries and I would imagine that most of the building elements would begin to deteriorate overtime. I also would imagine that a lot of theaters probably don't have a lot of extra money laying around to get their building inspected and repaired.
This is a perfect example why building's should be inspected regularly. The bottom line is stuff deteriorates over time and its essentially a ticking time bomb waiting to come crashing down. In response to Hunter's comment I would imagine this does not happen often because many old historic theatres are required to get inspected to prevent this type of tragedy from occurring. When they find something structurally wrong with a building they are required to fix it or else face it being condemned.
I'm wondering if cloth ties in plaster disintegrating over time is a common problem or not. It's easy for us, in hindsight, to say "of course these should have been inspected!" but 100 years is not that old in building years, especially in London, home to buildings that go back to the Middle Ages. Clearly, this type of plastering process should be inspected, but I think it's a little extreme to suggest a complete overhaul of what could be a sound building some predetermined number of years.
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