BBC News: A Canadian coroner's inquest has brought "some closure" to the family of a Radiohead drum technician killed in a stage collapse.
UK native Scott Johnson died in 2012 at Toronto's Downsview Park when the stage roofing buckled and fell.
Seven years later, an Ontario inquest has wrapped up hearings into Johnson's death and the causes of the tragedy.
The inquest has now released series of recommendations aimed at preventing similar such incidents.
5 comments:
This case is so frustrating because no one has been up front about what happened. I can understand not wanting to bring charges against the group of people who constructed the thing when it is no one person's fault, but it is still important for us to know why this happened. I can only assume, because there were no charges brought against a specific person, that this was the fault of the bunch of carpenters who did the construction. I agree with the suggestions to have better training, but I really do not think that is enough. I think it is important to state exactly what failed and why. That does not necessitate blaming a person. It would be beneficial in helping people understand how to avoid this in the future. If we claim it was a fluke and it was no one's fault, how can we learn from it?
All year, my classmates and I have been on crew, working on different shows that are being put on throughout the year. Given that we work in theater, there are a lot of risks that you have to consider when working in such a space. Nothing is completely secure and absolute and absolutely anything can go wrong. Even if you follow the procedure and double check everything, something could always wrong and it’s very easy to instantly blame. This situation is extremely saddening, unfortunate, and terrifying. The experiences of shows and working on the shows should be an enjoyable and a memorable time and it's extremely sad that something like this happened. There are so many questions arising about how to fix this situation and ensure it doesn’t happen again but there is no safe answer other than being extra cautious. The band was adamant in receiving justice for Scott and making sure his case was taken seriously.
I am so disappointed in the way this touring rig was handled. It is clear that this could have been prevented had the company been better prepared and provided the skilled labor that was necessary to stop this tragedy from happening. While this article isn't necessarily fleshed out enough with all of the details, it seems to me like they didn't have a team of skilled riggers who travelled with the band who were familiar with how to make everything safe, which is kind of absurd to me. There should have been a group of people attached to the project who were well trained and knew how to make it all safe, just like we have Sean West to make sure we make everything safe. The fact that this company trusted the unskilled labor from each location to set up an intricate scaffold that was responsible for thousands of peoples safety is really appalling to me. I hope that they learned something from this so that no one else has to lose a child who's just trying to do their job.
Oversights like this are the reason we have such fatal accidents in the entertainment and touring industries. People tend to overlook large problems while on the job site simply because they are rushing the install and don’t have the necessary knowledge to know if what they are doing is safe. In the case of the Toronto accident, people that should have known the ins and outs of the rig did not. This makes me wonder how many “near misses” we have on a day to day basis that doesn’t surface because they never lead to a deadly occurrence.
I hope at the very least people are reading these stories and understand that what we do as an industry affect the lives of hundreds of people and without the proper safety precautions aren't taken it can quickly lead to a deadly accident. It is sad to see that this is how the industry learns from its mistakes and we can only hope the amount of fatal accidents decreases as both the technology and equipment improve over the coming years.
When I first heard about the death of this tech on the Radiohead tour, I was extremely saddened by the situation, but I was also extremely frustrated. Something like this should not happen. For the most part, an "accident" like this only occurs when a mistake has been made. Whether that mistake is in the construction of the stage, or in the fact that a stage like that wasn't rated for certain winds, etc., having it fall is still because of some mistake somewhere. To see the companies or contracted for and built this stage plead not guilty is even more frustrating than it happening. The more people get away with things like this, the more likely it is to happen again. Without legal repercussions, it is hard to believe that the companies involved will really take time to reevaluate what happened and think about how it can be prevented. And to hear newspapers call this "some closure" also makes me sad as I am sure the family does not see this as closure.
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