Friday, April 26, 2019
Woman Suffers Near Fatal Injuries From Falling Prop at Coachella
www.edmtunes.com: Coachella has come to a close, leaving most with lifelong memories and excitement for next year. Unfortunately for one attendee, her night at Coachella went terribly wrong after a freak accident. During the Gucci Gang performance held at the Sahara Tent, one of the hanging set decorations fell into the crowd. The globe decoration itself was made of thin plastic but the metal bracket attaching it to the ceiling caused harm.
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8 comments:
This is absolutely terrifying. I’m surprised this is the first I’m hearing of this and am in complete shock. I’ve heard many stories of st pieces falling onto crew members and cast members, but I haven’t yet heard of something like this. It is so scary to think about this because this could happen to anyone. I feel so bad for the people who were hurt, especially the girl Caroline, with this being her first music festival, on top of everything. This girl is now in the hospital suffering from a brain bleed, concussion, and a fractured skull. The falling prop has not only traumatized the girl but has put her into a critical state with many injuries. It’s really sad and scary to know that this happened and especially because it’s 2019, and this is not the first Coachella I would’ve expected more caution. As the years go by, it seems as though there are more and more instances such as these occurring, and it quite scary.
Well this is awful. There are so many horror stories from Coachella this year: the death of the rigger, the overwhelming amount of technical issues, and, finally, this. I don’t know if this has happened because there is a level of comfort after doing something so many times that the work gets sloppy or if this year has just been a fluke. This experience must have been terrifying for Caroline. The recording was really terrifying. Considering how small this accident was, in perspective of how many other massive things could go wrong at Coachella, is really what struck me about this incident. A “small” mishap caused an incredible amount of damage to this poor woman. It goes to show how much care needs to go in handling every small detail at an event like this, especially when so many things are going over peoples’ heads. I hope she makes a full recovery, and I hope the people at Coachella take this event as a lesson in taking care in the future.
There has been so much that's happened at Coachella having to do with its technical elements failing so bad that its caused people to die and almost die, its really a shame. I think that with Golden Voice, the managing company of Coachella, OutsideLands, and various other concerts and music festivals, they have to start evolving their safety and workers rules and protocols as they continue to evolve the scale and traction of the festivals and concerts. People will always continue to go to Coachella, its a great festival that attracts some of the strongest artists around to perform on their stages to millions of people who are willing to pay a lot of money to watch their favorite acts- not die. I think that the options are clear, and Golden Voice has a lot of meetings and conversations that are going to need to be had between now and next year, they can either scale down (it's worked before), stick to rigging and special effects that are reliable, or they need to invest in some serious safety reconfigurations.
We talk often about safety in our classes here, and more often than not there are several accidents listed as examples or cautionary tales. Mostly those examples are from different time periods, or different countries with different safety standards. But every now and then there are events that remind you thinking about and designing around safety affect us here and now. Coachella is one of the largest music festivals in the country. It’s a mutli-million dollar venture. It makes you wonder how issues like this fall through the cracks. The sad part is, it could easily be any one of us here making these mistakes. That’s why it’s so important to have safety as a driving factor in every venture. Risk assessments, stamped drawings, thorough inspections are all crucial. We need to make a commitment to putting in more than just due-diligence. We need to make absolute best efforts when it comes to safety, then push it even farther than that.
This is emblematic of the myriad of problems with Coachella. Coachella this year has been as problematic as it has been culturally recently. Safety has fallen by the wayside this year and resulted in one death of a rigger, and nearly a second one. This is very upsetting and very problematic as well. Coachella has long been a haven for people involved in pop culture to herald themselves as “deep” and more civilized. This incident could have easily been prevented, and like the previous death at the music festival this year, was only caused by negligence. Coachella needs to address these issues and be held accountable for their actions in not taking the proper precautions when hiring, and for not double checking that their festival was safe for employees and attendees alike. I hope that these accidents will only lead to a more positive, and safe future for everyone who works on the festival and beyond.
I’ve read another article recently about a crew member dying from a set issue at a festival during load-in. Again, nobody really paid that much attention to the tragedy, they just moved on a fixed in, only concerned with opening the festival. This leads to huge issues in the safety and structural integrity of festival sets. They are put up very quickly and struck almost immediately. Festivals in general only care about profit. They sell tickets at extremely high prices and over price food, experiences, and even air transportation. The problem is the profit side of this industry. People are easily wowed by instagrammable moments and places, but don’t praise the quality or safety of any event. So festival creators focus on what’s going to get them the most likes and shares instead of the actual construction of the festivals. There needs to be a shift in what’s a priority, because safety should always be number one no matter what.
Coachella has been having an absolutely disastrous year when it comes to safety with such a high profile event I would have hoped this sort of thing hadn’t happened especially following the death of a rigger in the preparation for the event not too long ago all in all it’s two too many accidents at Coachella this year. Unfortunately, I think the event is so popularized that it unlikely to see a decrease in sales for the festival next year but I’m hopeful that it will so it sees some sort of large scale effect for the lack of safety, I have to imagine their will be a lawsuit coming from somewhere and whether that falls with Coachella themselves of with the company who did the rigging for the event I couldn’t be sure but I’m sure they’ll be more news coming on this event. Events like the ones that have happened at Coachella this year remind us that accidents happen but it is of the utmost importance that safety be the priority and we minimize risk wherever possible, particularly when rigging overhead of an audience.
This just did not seem like the best year for Coachella, after the tragic accident that killed a stagehand during set up, to now a prop falling from the ceiling onto an audience member, not good. I will never forget that during my rigging class, we were all looking for an answer to the question, is rigging safe? And our teacher always replied with there is inherent danger and our job is to make sure that danger is kept to a minimum. This is a completely valid answer because as we hear about from time to time, hardware fails and unfortunately people can be hurt because of that. I know for theatrical rigging that anything hung above audience has to be rigged in a 10 to 1 ratio, I am not sure if that is the case for an outdoor music festival, but if it is, that bracket failure had to have been catastrophic.
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