Monday, November 26, 2012
Scaffolding Near Linkin Park Concert Collapses, One Killed, 12 Hospitalized
PLSN: Nineteen Linkin Park concert-goers making their way from a parking area to Cape Town Stadium Nov. 7 were injured when temporary scaffolding supporting a sports drink advertisement fell in high winds. One of the injured, a female, later died at the hospital; twelve others required hospitalization after the accident.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
After reading that the scaffolding collapsed in high winds, it just goes to show that individuals might not always think about all the conditions possible. It is good practice to weight scaffolding more than you might think, and ensure that any signage being placed on scaffolding have some sort of cut flaps for wind to pass through. Hopefully the producing company will learn from this, and even though they may not be at fault, help ensure that incidents like this do not occur in the future.
I hate to read articles like this. High winds can be traitorous and seems to be a common theme amongst the scaffolding or stage collapses. It seems like with as common as these seem to be, there would be some kind of National Guidelines that are in place to ensure the safety of innocent bystanders. The group singing wasn't even aware of the happening but I think they should have been told. I know that personally I will be steering clear of anything large during a high wind situation!
I have to say, I'm not exactly surprised to read this. Scaffolding never looks all the sturdy to me and to hear that it fell during high winds makes sense to me. Of course this shouldn't have happened, and AJ is right, maybe this will mean a re-design or just a new code on how much weight to put on structures like this. I wonder why the band didn't know about this until after the concert. I would have hoped that they would have found out sooner. Hopefully people will learn from this incident.
It is odd to me that this structure was approved for use when it was capable of being blown over by high winds. I understand that hurricane-like winds can take down just about anything, but I doubt that these winds were that strong if people were able to be out and about and going to a concert. I certainly hope that whoever approved the structure will consider a review of their standards and will take possible weather conditions into account when doing so. (This is a side note...but does anyone else think it's weird that Linkin Park said they weren't affiliated with Lucozade when Lucozade is supposedly one of the three sponsors of their South African tour? It doesn't really matter but it does seem like an odd oversight.) Things like this are preventable; that woman should not have lost her life for this sports-drink ad. I hope that the last few incidents of this nature really get the attention of both presenters and standards-setting organizations so that the proper measures can be taken to ensure that nothing like this happens again.
It baffles me that accidents continue to happen. One would think that with the frequency of these occurrences that some organization would take the lead and establish some sort of review process to ensure stricter safety protocols. Maybe we as an industry need to take a pause from everything and closely examine why stages and scaffolds continue to fall and crumble. It is surprising that there hasn't been a government response to this either, as I'm sure in this circumstance over-idiot-proofing the scaffolding could actually prove beneficial.
I was surprised that the company did not take such precautions in stabilizing the scaffolding. I know that in NYC when there is a storm coming, or even high winds the mayor enforces specific rules that construction workers need to follow to ensure safety. Also, if this scaffolding was temporary, wouldn't it be easier to take down for the storm? There is defiantly a good lawsuit waiting to happen.
I have read too many of these articles recently about scaffolding falling and injuring or killing people either on job sites or at concerts. Dale mentioned this incident today in OSHA class and I always find it amazing how the articles always say that the scaffolding was inspected. As with anything man made/build accidents will occur, things will malfunction. However active planning sometimes helps. They would have checked the weather news and noticed that high winds were due. Hence extra care should have gone into erecting the scaffolding. Also I wonder if the concert also had scaffolding by the stage. Most likely!! I also wonder if it was inspected by the same person. Also Shannon, Linkin Park put out the politically appropriate remark. It had nothing to do with them, which also means, it was their sponsors, not directly the band's fault. I also think that they should have been told during their show. Ambulances and police would had to have been outside the venue helping injured and dying people while others were inside partying their lives away. Not right!
This is truly upsetting. I'm currently in rigging and we were recently discussing things like this and how they are very rare, yet they still happen. It makes me wonder if those involved with putting up the sign knew what they were doing or if they truly knew how to properly put it up for it to not fail under certain pressures. It's so sad to know that because of someone's failure to rig the sign proper a fan was killed and a few others were injured while trying to watch a show. It's upsetting and not to mention, not informing the band of the accident is terrible, just saying.
This kind of makes me wonder if the scaffolding was put together by people who were of the opinion that they had done it a hundred times before and it wouldn't break this time either. Meaning they might not have done very many safety check or the proper safety checks. Still though kinda scary Im now a little nervous to get back on the Scotch and Soda scaffolding which is super sketchy. I go up that thing all the time I might approach it now more timidly.
scaffolding is dangerous - it is scary to read articles like this. I agree with AJ and Mariah that maybe some of the regulations regarding scaffolding should be reexamined. everyone who commented on this article seem to be taken back by the fact that the infrastructure was approved in the first place - which is really a troubling thought. in an era which we are so safe about most aspects of the work environment you would think we had better enforcement on these regulations - maybe this will spark an increase in awareness.
Post a Comment