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"The sudden collapse of a canopy above the stage where Akon was set to perform Thursday injured three people and halted the highly anticipated Fall Band Party before it began."
Wow - it's great to actually see a picture of it. It really puts the incident into scope, cuz I couldn't quite picture what had happened - and...wow.
One of the student's comments interested me. She said "I’m going to be really disappointed if Akon is cancelled. He was supposed to be the highlight of my week" I mean yeah - it's sad the concert was canceled and oh poor you, because clearly your life sucks, but it amazes me that she completely misses the fact that the canopy on the stage just collapsed and seriously injured some people are you really worried about your week not being exciting enough? Yeah...that just bothered me. And then the girl worrying about the pizza....
And lastly "He said an evaluation of what happened could not be given until Friday morning." I'm still really quite curious as to the cause.
It really gives you the sense of the seriousness of the accident with the picture. It really cuts it in half. Wow, I mean, it will be interesting to hear what the cause of it was. Maybe it is a sign. Because the band was so bad, the concert was meant to be canceled. And the kids are just wild complaining how it ruined their weekends. What's happening to the world!
this kind of thing scares me so completely. it really makes you question nonpermanent structures and what not that are moved around to to appease different purposes... it reminds me of the likes of a carnival or something of the sort being that the structures arent meant to be permanent therefore in some cases probably also arent built o be one hundred percent structurally sound. its sad really. it makes the job of the td or rigger or whoever is in charge of oversee that much harder when unpredictability such as this is taken into account. scary.
I am really most curious to know what happened to the structure to cause it to collapse like that? Usually temporary structures like that are relatively sturdy, and one would assume that they are not in constant danger of catastrophic failure. The one quote about how canceling the concert ruined that one girl's day, stuck out for me as well. She needs a little perspective to see that people could have died that day, much more serious than missing her precious concert.
I really don't like how this article talks about hungry college students grabbing pizza as apposed to talking about what actually happened. I wonder what caused it to give in like that. I really want to know who gets blamed for this and what they did wrong not so people can point a finger I'm just interested in who is to blame in a situation like this.
Man, I bet that was an expensive accident. It looks like they had lights ON the canopy. Eek. I know everything is supposed to be safe and double-checked and whatnot, but I don't think I really trust these things anymore. It seems like portable structures fail or collapse more often then they should. It makes me very worried that it's really just a bunch of students, or maybe paid technicians putting this stuff up. It doesn't really need to be approved by anyone. Oh dear.
Wouldn't want to be the guy responsible for that. All of us in PTM have been hypothesizing how this might have happened but we thought it was before the truss was in place, not after sound check just before the concert. It happening at that point just means that someone really screwed up. Either they didn't put it together correctly or whomever specked it didn't account for something, wind maybe.
outdoor setups like this are pretty common. who saw the carnival concert last year? or the year before that? the rig that dave emerson brings to CMU each year for carnival is exactly like that: everything is hung, wired, gelled. it slides out of a truck on wheels, gets bolted together, and flies up on 4 hand-crank towers. quite impressive to have a whole show ready, including focus, in under 2 hours
only the one in the picture here looks like it was just a flat rectangular roof, the one CMU rents is a triangular structure and is much more sturdy.
Oh goodness.....I just want to shake my head. I love the that the Ems said they were happy it didn't fall during the concert because it would have scared the students as opposed to it hurting more people since now an entire band is performing on stage. The comments from the students were rather curious and the focus on the pizza was rather odd. I think the focus of the piece was off, we want to know about the accident not student life.
I'm totally in agreement with Sarah. The fact that Akon got canceled really is not a big deal when you consider that the canopy collapsed. Also, how was the pizza really an important part of the story?
My friend from Emory, Jonathon had it on his facebook. it was actually his status and read jonathon is akon concert. It must have cost the school thousands of dollars to have him there. What the heck were tehy thinking with the canopy, blame the techs at Emory, it would not have happened with the AB tech at CMU. .. hopefully.
I just thing it's hilarious that 99% of this article is about how people were sad they couldn't see Akon and that there wasn't enough free pizza to go around to all the disappointed students.
Anyway---It was nice to hear some nuts and bolts and legislative terminology get utilized at the end of the article. I assume the tent and truss work and lighting install was all the tent compnay or the university would have more directions in which to point their finger. I think the really interesting document will be the liability report, but it's unlikely that that will ever enter the public domain.
My question is how this happened. Overhead rigging is supposed to have at bare minimum a 7-8x design factor over the possible fail load, and some dynamic loading allowance. The pictures are not very high resolution, but there appear to be 4 par-bars on a very small truss structure. As someone already mentioned, i'd hate to be whoever decided what to put up (or put it up incorrectly, depending on the failure mode), because I'd definitely be out of work and probably facing lawsuit. catastrophic failures are not supposed to happen in overhead rigging.
Goes to show you that when rigging goes wrong it goes really wrong and that you really need to stay on your feet when you're putting anything over a persons head. The tent looks like it was of reasonable construction so you'd have to expect that it was a failure due to bad installation. The crack was right at the CL in two places on both ends so my guess would be someone missed a bolt or two (duh). It really sucks that anyone was hurt, I'm sure they where tech people like us. I really wish they talked more about the structure rather than the pizza and disappointed people.
I am very disappointed that all most of these students can think about is that they are missing out on a concert and that one girl didn't get any of the peices. Two people were unconscious and one injured. It just seems really self centered for these people to just be thinking about having the concert canceled. Maybe I just don't care for Akon.
I would guess that some outside company came in and set up the rig, otherwise there would be some comment from a student who set it up. There was some big miscalculation here, or more likely, not one made at all.
It happened after sound check, eh? I don't mean to make light of the situation, but I wonder if they were riding the levels a little high or perhaps the person in charge of putting up the tent didn't exactly take those factors into account. Anyways, that being said, it's sad that this happened, but it's good that no one was too seriously injured.
well . . . i think many more would have been hurt if Akon did in fact go on to play. in a way this is a bit of a blessing. as many before me have already said, this was a huge f*#! up on someone's part. either the construction guys were feeling lax or the managrs just didn't look it over. i am sure that it was a well experienced crew that just didn't pay attetion the whole time, because they got too comfortable with their job. this is a good reminder that we always need to be on our toes as managres, becasue accidents will happen when you stop caring.
It seems to me that there is something of a dived in the rigging world. There is a school of riggers how always run the numbers, always double check themselves. Then there is a school of riggers how “know” what the equipment can do. I know there are a good number of companies who put truss in the air who don’t really know any thing other than want they have done in the past worked. Well if that’s how you do things this is what can happen. When you put something over peoples heads your responsible for the well being of those individuals. Peoples lives are not something you take chances with.
19 comments:
Wow - it's great to actually see a picture of it. It really puts the incident into scope, cuz I couldn't quite picture what had happened - and...wow.
One of the student's comments interested me. She said "I’m going to be really disappointed if Akon is cancelled. He was supposed to be the highlight of my week" I mean yeah - it's sad the concert was canceled and oh poor you, because clearly your life sucks, but it amazes me that she completely misses the fact that the canopy on the stage just collapsed and seriously injured some people are you really worried about your week not being exciting enough? Yeah...that just bothered me. And then the girl worrying about the pizza....
And lastly "He said an evaluation of what happened could not be given until Friday morning." I'm still really quite curious as to the cause.
It really gives you the sense of the seriousness of the accident with the picture. It really cuts it in half. Wow, I mean, it will be interesting to hear what the cause of it was. Maybe it is a sign. Because the band was so bad, the concert was meant to be canceled. And the kids are just wild complaining how it ruined their weekends. What's happening to the world!
this kind of thing scares me so completely. it really makes you question nonpermanent structures and what not that are moved around to to appease different purposes... it reminds me of the likes of a carnival or something of the sort being that the structures arent meant to be permanent therefore in some cases probably also arent built o be one hundred percent structurally sound. its sad really. it makes the job of the td or rigger or whoever is in charge of oversee that much harder when unpredictability such as this is taken into account. scary.
I am really most curious to know what happened to the structure to cause it to collapse like that? Usually temporary structures like that are relatively sturdy, and one would assume that they are not in constant danger of catastrophic failure. The one quote about how canceling the concert ruined that one girl's day, stuck out for me as well. She needs a little perspective to see that people could have died that day, much more serious than missing her precious concert.
I really don't like how this article talks about hungry college students grabbing pizza as apposed to talking about what actually happened. I wonder what caused it to give in like that. I really want to know who gets blamed for this and what they did wrong not so people can point a finger I'm just interested in who is to blame in a situation like this.
Man, I bet that was an expensive accident. It looks like they had lights ON the canopy. Eek. I know everything is supposed to be safe and double-checked and whatnot, but I don't think I really trust these things anymore. It seems like portable structures fail or collapse more often then they should. It makes me very worried that it's really just a bunch of students, or maybe paid technicians putting this stuff up. It doesn't really need to be approved by anyone. Oh dear.
Wouldn't want to be the guy responsible for that. All of us in PTM have been hypothesizing how this might have happened but we thought it was before the truss was in place, not after sound check just before the concert. It happening at that point just means that someone really screwed up. Either they didn't put it together correctly or whomever specked it didn't account for something, wind maybe.
outdoor setups like this are pretty common. who saw the carnival concert last year? or the year before that? the rig that dave emerson brings to CMU each year for carnival is exactly like that: everything is hung, wired, gelled. it slides out of a truck on wheels, gets bolted together, and flies up on 4 hand-crank towers. quite impressive to have a whole show ready, including focus, in under 2 hours
only the one in the picture here looks like it was just a flat rectangular roof, the one CMU rents is a triangular structure and is much more sturdy.
Oh goodness.....I just want to shake my head. I love the that the Ems said they were happy it didn't fall during the concert because it would have scared the students as opposed to it hurting more people since now an entire band is performing on stage. The comments from the students were rather curious and the focus on the pizza was rather odd. I think the focus of the piece was off, we want to know about the accident not student life.
I'm totally in agreement with Sarah. The fact that Akon got canceled really is not a big deal when you consider that the canopy collapsed. Also, how was the pizza really an important part of the story?
My friend from Emory, Jonathon had it on his facebook. it was actually his status and read jonathon is akon concert. It must have cost the school thousands of dollars to have him there. What the heck were tehy thinking with the canopy, blame the techs at Emory, it would not have happened with the AB tech at CMU. .. hopefully.
I just thing it's hilarious that 99% of this article is about how people were sad they couldn't see Akon and that there wasn't enough free pizza to go around to all the disappointed students.
Anyway---It was nice to hear some nuts and bolts and legislative terminology get utilized at the end of the article. I assume the tent and truss work and lighting install was all the tent compnay or the university would have more directions in which to point their finger. I think the really interesting document will be the liability report, but it's unlikely that that will ever enter the public domain.
My question is how this happened. Overhead rigging is supposed to have at bare minimum a 7-8x design factor over the possible fail load, and some dynamic loading allowance. The pictures are not very high resolution, but there appear to be 4 par-bars on a very small truss structure. As someone already mentioned, i'd hate to be whoever decided what to put up (or put it up incorrectly, depending on the failure mode), because I'd definitely be out of work and probably facing lawsuit. catastrophic failures are not supposed to happen in overhead rigging.
Goes to show you that when rigging goes wrong it goes really wrong and that you really need to stay on your feet when you're putting anything over a persons head. The tent looks like it was of reasonable construction so you'd have to expect that it was a failure due to bad installation. The crack was right at the CL in two places on both ends so my guess would be someone missed a bolt or two (duh). It really sucks that anyone was hurt, I'm sure they where tech people like us. I really wish they talked more about the structure rather than the pizza and disappointed people.
I am very disappointed that all most of these students can think about is that they are missing out on a concert and that one girl didn't get any of the peices. Two people were unconscious and one injured. It just seems really self centered for these people to just be thinking about having the concert canceled. Maybe I just don't care for Akon.
I would guess that some outside company came in and set up the rig, otherwise there would be some comment from a student who set it up. There was some big miscalculation here, or more likely, not one made at all.
It happened after sound check, eh? I don't mean to make light of the situation, but I wonder if they were riding the levels a little high or perhaps the person in charge of putting up the tent didn't exactly take those factors into account. Anyways, that being said, it's sad that this happened, but it's good that no one was too seriously injured.
well . . . i think many more would have been hurt if Akon did in fact go on to play. in a way this is a bit of a blessing.
as many before me have already said, this was a huge f*#! up on someone's part. either the construction guys were feeling lax or the managrs just didn't look it over. i am sure that it was a well experienced crew that just didn't pay attetion the whole time, because they got too comfortable with their job. this is a good reminder that we always need to be on our toes as managres, becasue accidents will happen when you stop caring.
It seems to me that there is something of a dived in the rigging world. There is a school of riggers how always run the numbers, always double check themselves. Then there is a school of riggers how “know” what the equipment can do. I know there are a good number of companies who put truss in the air who don’t really know any thing other than want they have done in the past worked. Well if that’s how you do things this is what can happen. When you put something over peoples heads your responsible for the well being of those individuals. Peoples lives are not something you take chances with.
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