The worker was identified as Christopher Griffin, according to the Riverside County Coroner's Office.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Coachella Stagehand Killed In Fall From San Diego
The worker was identified as Christopher Griffin, according to the Riverside County Coroner's Office.
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Situations like this are so tragic but serve to remind us that no matter your experience and title no one is above safety procedures and that these procedures are in place to keep you safe and not to inconvenience your workflow. Once we get more experience in fields and comfortable with tasks and equipment it is very easy to let safety procedures slide but accidents are bound to happen this way. When David was talking about this in class the other day he mentioned that this man was one of the top riggers in the industry but having titles like that doesn’t protect you from the unpredictable or unexpected and this is far too high of a price to have to pay. This can remind you about how dangerous our industry can really be sometimes and I think as future leaders in the industry we really need to start holding people to higher safety standards and begin that practice with ourselves.
This is why I wear a harness in the box booms. I know a lot of people are annoyed by it and find it unnecessary, especially since the box booms are not super high up, but you could still be seriously injured if you fell. It does not matter how much experience you have. Safety is very important and a harness is the only thing that will actually protect you. I hope that this incident will push Goldenvoice, the company, to have higher safety standards. That said, I do not know to what extent this is their fault. I hope they already had safety practices in place, and this has more to do with the mistake of one person whose experience caused them to be over confident. This is a reminder that no matter how comfortable we get with our jobs, we should never ignore safety precautions. As we become leaders in these same positions we need to remember to protect ourselves and the people we are in charge of.
This is heartbreaking. Christopher Griffin’s death was horrible and preventable, and I feel horrible for his family’s and friends’ loss. It is so scary to think about this happening to me, and this is why I wear safety equipment when it is necessary. Another article I read earlier this week said that “every OSHA rule is written in blood,” because something often had to go wrong for the rules to be written. Hopefully some movement towards stricter safety regulations will come out of this to prevent future similar accidents. Awareness of stories like Griffin’s will hopefully enlighten people to understand the risks of their own behavior on the job. And hopefully more people will wear harnesses when they’re supposed to. As heavy and uncomfortable as they can be, they are life saving and necessary. I read somewhere that this is one of two deaths ever in Coachella history, so hopefully the organization will be very careful going forward.
What a horrible tragedy for this company. This is why I fear the steel grid. I realize there is a difference but these are the terrible stories that fuel my paranoia. I would also like to know more about the specifics of this accident because like with every airplane crash we get more information and changes so the specifics are unlikely to happen again. There were obviously not any useful details give which is understandable, but something must have gone seriously wrong. This is also why I dislike Coachella. You are outside and exposed to the elements. It is one thing to rig something in a nice cool climate controlled theatre, it is quite another to be exposed to the desert winds. These kind of music festivals are my worst nightmare come true. Besides this accident I just do not really like the music all that much and it is so hot, I hate the heat and it is a horrible sweaty smelly experience one could not pay me to enjoy.
I will never fully understand people’s resistance to safety measures. I understand that people find them annoying, a nuisance, and feel so confident in their ability to complete a task that they don’t see a negative outcome, but the world is unpredictable. Working outside is unpredictable. It doesn’t matter if you can do something in your sleep because you will always be doing something in a set of circumstances that are unpredictable. There is no inconvenience with a safety measure that is worse than the outcomes that can follow ignoring those protocols. These stories, as tragic as they are, do remind us that we need to do better to create an industry-wide culture of safety. This starts with us bringing these safety measures into our practice at school, including harnesses in the box booms and on the loading bridge, hard hats, ear and eye protection, etc, even in situations where the stakes don’t seem as high. Doing this will take a level of personal accountability and accountability with our peers that we don’t quite have yet, but I do hope this story inspires us to do better.
This is so heartbreaking. Especially since I just wrote a response to the article last week about the stagehand dying setting up a Radiohead concert. Knowing that both of these situations were preventable really makes me sad. The importance of safety in live entertainment work is of the utmost importance. I’m glad they promote that with the box booms in the Chosky, but the riggers in this line of work go much higher than the box booms do so keeping that same notion of safety is even more important. My old lighting teacher went on a lot of tours, and would always tell me stories of riggers and lighting kids shimmying down trusses like 100ft in the air, with no harness. Since this is the exact line of work I want to go into, no matter how long people have been in the business or doing this job, no one is too good for safety.
What an awful thing to happen, my heart goes out to his family and friends. I’m reminded of last week’s article about Trump repealing OSHA standards and its closing line about how “each OSHA regulation is written in blood”- we sometimes take for granted how dangerous our jobs actually are. Doing things like working at height over and over can make it seem routine and safe, and cause us to ignore the safety measures put in place to help us, or take shortcuts. We spend a lot of time complaining about how unnecessary and time-wasting certain safety procedures are, but moments like this should remind us how necessary they really are. Even something simple like hanging lights on the tension grid could end very badly with just a small accident, and that’s something we should keep in mind in our work. No performance or task is worth any of our lives or safety.
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