Theatre Safety Blog: China News reports that during the construction of the stage for an upcoming Jolin Tsai concert the ground supported stage truss system collapsed. On worker was killed, and 13 other were injured. On of the injured is in serious condition, while the others only suffered minor injuries.
9 comments:
Staging safety is enough of a problem in the US! How do we think its going to happen everywhere else in the world? There are always dangers in and industry and culture that are driven by unbridled avarice for expansion and development, and someone somewhere has probably said “accidents will happen” and moved on to the next project without a hard hat in flip flops. I am the first to admit that we should use reason when deciding what protective equipment to use, and more is not always better, but to a certain extent, there are some situations in which you just cant know what will happen, and you have to take some minimum precautions. The largest problem I think can be described by a quote from CM motor school: “In china, that’s a 5 ton motor.” There are not the same stringent safety precautions and rating factors that we use in the US to account for the fact that sometimes things arnt as strong as we think they are.
I know this didn’t happen in the US, but it still happened, and I can guarantee that the entertainment industry is capable of sending people over seas. I just posted on another rigging safety article, and not to beat a dead horse, but safety is important. Certainly, this is demonstrated by the destruction shown in the photos presented in the article.
What amazes me most of all is that after such an incident, the clean up crew aren’t even wearing proper safety equipment. Hell, they aren’t wearing ANY safety equipment. Their job is to dismantle all this mangled steel and stage equipment that killed 1 and sent 13 others to the hospital, and they aren’t even taking in what can be learned from the disaster they’re cleaning up. I never paused to think about what rigging safety, or even safety in general, meant in countries outside the US, but if I ever go overseas on a project I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever go over seas on a project.
Like Chris and Alex, I think safety is important. Really important. We are "lucky" enough in the US to have such a litigious culture in the US that events like this are very few and far between. I think we are also more likely to handle the aftermath better. I don't want to speculate about what caused the collapse but when I saw the title of the article my first thought was "How could this happen here in America." This was quickly followed by "oh it was in China, that makes sense" That may be an unfair stereotype or some ingrained patriotism gone wrong but look how badly they reacted. As the poster points out, no hard hats, no safety gear, no precautions. Its like oh well we lost a few workers, good thing they are just meat bags.
As an after thought from looking at the pictures I do want to speculate about what went wrong. Everything moved towards the middle as it went down. Nothing snapped outwards. It appears as though a central beam or two were not rate for that kinda weight and snapped.
Having been lucky enough to have never witnessed a catastrophic safety failure such as the one detailed in the blog post, I come from a place of relative innocence. I have no idea how bad failures like this one are, how often thy occur, or even what sorts of phenomena cause these sorts of disasters. However, I do have an inkling as to the difference in safety standards between China and the U.S, something that explains at least a small portion of what may be at fault for the collapse mentioned in this particular article.
The article takes painstaking time to point out the many safety shortfalls found in the images given from the scene (less than half of the workers are wearing safety helmets, safety vests are not a thing, and correct footwear is lacking), and detail why these details may have contributed to the collapse. Some of these details no doubt have been suppressed by the Great Firewall of China, but I'm sure that the author of this piece will persevere in his quest to bring comprehensive theatrical safety standards to China.
The images in this article are terrifying. I can’t help but look at the photos and picture the massive structure coming down. One of my biggest fears as someone who hopes to work in theater one day is being responsible for an accident like this. The people who cause these types of situations aren’t necessarily stupid, careless, or bad at their jobs, they are just people who made at least one mistake at least one time, which really applies to everyone. Then again, I figure that for this to happen, there would have to be a lot of people involved in the production who overlooked whatever caused this. Ultimately, if the situation is engineered correctly and proper safety protocol is used, these types of accidents are completely avoidable. Still, it is important to be aware of what a mistake can cause, because all it takes is enough people not being careful enough.
As someone who has lived in China for more than 10 years, I am honestly not surprised to see this. I think it's less likely that this accident is due to the difference in safety standards between China and the U.S. - the people are competent to do math and calculate the numbers; it's the matter of actually enforcing the rules. In China, rules exist but are never enforced - this includes drinking age, piracy, etc, and I assume is what happened here with the safety rules. This combined with other rules that are not enforced, such as perhaps using cheaper materials/labor, could accumulate and lead to this accident. The artist of the concert, Jolin Tsai, is very famous in both China and Taiwan so this is not by any means a small/obscure production, but rather a very major and well known one. The fact the accident happened to such a (supposedly) professional and well known production shows how trivial safety is viewed there. Even in the pictures of the aftermath, no one is wearing any safety equipments. I think we should definitely learn from this and remember to always strictly enforce the safety rules.
While reading this article I was immediately reminded of the August 13, 2011 stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair, which was caused by high winds and improper ballasting. The accident caused the stage’s roof to collapse forward, into the audience, in a horrifying scene caught on video. The incident killed 7, and seriously injured 58 others.
What’s so infuriating about this accident in China, the Indiana accident, and many other staging and rigging accidents, is that they are so avoidable. SO avoidable. The Indiana accident was the result of cutting corners in setting up the staging, and the deaths/injuries could have been prevented if event management had heeded the warnings of high winds/storms in the area. Although we don’t have enough details for the accident in China, from the photos it looks like the structure just collapsed on itself, something that could be the result of too much weight on a structural element not designed to hold that load, or as Sophie commented, possibly improper assembly or even faulty, cheap hardware.
Like I said, these accidents are avoidable, and because of this they are inexcusable. We have pretty high standards here in the US, yet problems still arise. To stop all preventable accidents, those responsible for setting up staging and rigging need to have safety as their first priority.
This is my nightmare. I can't imagine being someone who was in charge of this situation and realizing that not following safety standards had lead to people being injured. I think it's entirely based on not following the rules/rules never being enforced as Sophie said. Every time I've worked in another country there has been no enforcement of any rules whatsoever. Everything was just left to whatever the person in charge decided was enough. That, to me, is very sad and completely unacceptable. I wonder if this incident will lead to another wave of safety enforcement like it does when something like this happens in the US. I'm not sure that we've heard all of the times when something like this has happened elsewhere, and I don't know how often a tragedy like this sparks action.
This issue keeps happen again and again, and again, and I think even though in the most safety concern all the time place like here in the US, it still happens every now and then. It’s sad to hear and just wish people will care more about it. But I’m thinking maybe it’s also because the number of people attend the concerts may be too many and they bumped each other in order to be able to get closest to the stage which cause in the shaking of the whole stage construction and lead to the collapses. It could happened. I think we used to read something similar to this in this green page maybe last year? About the similar type of situation that happens in South Korea that so many people injured in the scene and it’s also a concert of someone’s performance?.... this is still heartbreaking and unfortunate to realized that it happens pretty often in this kind of event.
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