www.sfgate.com: Every year, electronic music heads at Coachella flock to Do LaB, a festival within a festival known for its curated lineup and surprise big-name acts; past guests have included Skrillex and Billie Eilish. DJ and producer John Summit was one of this year’s surprise sets, touching down a little after 8 p.m. Friday night. About halfway through this performance, onlookers report that a heavy light fixture fell from the stage, injuring at least one person in the audience.
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A heavy mover falling mid-set and injuring someone so horribly is insane. It was just a video but I didn’t see a safety of any kind actually on the light, although if there was one it would’ve broken. I wonder if it was a general structural issue that could happen all over Coachella, if one person was a bit careless when hanging it, or if it was simply an unlucky freak accident. I think it’s crazy that there seemingly has been no public announcement made for an accident that could have killed someone in a preventable way. Live entertainment is supposed to be built on contingency, not enormous light fixtures that fall over and hit people in the wind. I would never look at any concert venue the same if this happened to me. I can’t believe that Coachella of all places isn’t using safety cables or a more robust safety system.
As shocking and horrific as this accident was, unfortunately accidents at Coachella aren't all that rare.What is concerning to me is that in the video that was attached to this article we got to see the lighting fixture and it wasn't a normal incandescent light fixture it was a full on moving light. Those are known to be some of the heaviest lighting equipment there is. What is also horrific to read is that in all this chaos and crowd and loud music and flashing lights is no one was able to flag for help and no one was able to see that this woman was very badly injured from this lighting fixture falling on her head, a looker on said that there was blood gushing from her head there was blood all over the lighting fixture and all over the ground and that they tried to flag down medical attention or get anyone to help and that their last result was having three people pick her up and rush her to a medical tent. And this is why these big events like this are so dangerous.
What a terrible thing to get hit with. I'm not sure exactly how far that mover fell, but if it actually hit her in the head I'm surprised it didn't do much more serious damage. I'm really curious as to what failed here, and how this was able to happen. It does make sense that heavy winds could cause this, but I certainly think that should've been accounted for and/or covered by a factor of safety somewhere. It seems that this was hung on a vertical pipe, in which case using safety cables does prove very difficult without specialty equipment. But they should have some extra layer of protection in place. The people in charge knew that Coachella was going to be happening outside and it's not like a tornado ripped through and caused this to happen. I hope that it didn't take too long for the appropriate people to realize what had happened and stop the concert. And I really hope that the woman doesn't suffer severe injuries. Though of course, I'm sure she will get a lot of money from Coachella.
I think something is interesting to learn from both this and Anyma’s cancelled set. People don’t actually know what they’re paying for when they spend all this money, in terms of the workload put into a large-scale show like this. I honestly think it's funny (not in a haha way, in a weird way) that there’s not more transparency for non-industry concertgoers to be like: “Hey, there are thousands of pounds of electrics and truss hanging above your head! Things fail often! And they’re safe, but only so safe!” I think that this specifically was a technician error, but it’s always something I think about when I’m at a venue. Although these things happen, the entire point is: they shouldn't, and when they do, it's bad. I really hope that the concertgoer is okay, and they made lots and lots of money off of this accident - it's only fair.
Oh, no big deal, just feeling a little bit bad about myself and what I've achieved at my big age. This guy is 23 and has a resume this stacked? Insane. But that’s beside the point. A show like The Wizard of Oz has been done hundreds of times the same exact way with the same costumes and the same set, and it is refreshing to see someone really care about the artistry and the craft of the shows that they are doing. It just shows that the team has an interesting idea of the show, and the designers really love what they do. Because anyone can rent a set of costumes and do lion makeup and paint someone's face silver. But the real beauty is doing something different and avant-garde, which shows the love of the game! It also shows the attention paid to a script, and the level of detail which probably is the reason why this guy has such a stacked resume.
There was a music festival a little while back, I don't remember when or how long ago it was or where/ what the festival was but I remember seeing many videos about a set piece or speaker or maybe it was another light fixture that fell down while loading in and it killed the person or severely injured the person who was hit… Maybe this was even at Coachella so when I saw videos about it this year, I wasn't super surprised, but also, I was just disappointed in how unsafe so much of our equipment can be… if not done properly. I think often times crews just want to get done fast and early, causing many crews to forget small things like safeties on lighting fixtures. This could have been a lot bigger of a case which is the scariest part is it was such a near miss and I wonder if someone were to have potentially died if it would've caused Coachella to get shut down or what those consequences would have been.
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