Stage Collapsed 1 dead at a Radiohead concert.
Is this happening too often?
It seems there is one of these coming down every 6 months, who regulates the design requirements when dealing with such structures.
RIP and condolences to the family.
Celtic
There have been far too many recently in America and in Europe.
I have had a good look at the photos of most of them and in particular the recent one in Canada.
There is a photo, taken a couple of days before, showing about ten people without boards and harness, handballing the gear up to erect the basic structure.
There is another photo showing the roof almost in position a few hours before the concert. It looks like it was being raised all in one go, including all the lighting fixed under it and including the plastic covers. A lifting beam was in position over the roof supported by a spindly looking tower. The boom was missing on many of the later photos.
The news reports also stated that the collapse happened a few hours before the concert was due to start and some of the public were already inside the grounds.
All of this indicates a major problem with the time allowed to erect, inspect and certify the temporary works. Nothing like enough time was given to the scaffolders/riggers to put this complex structure in place.
I also know that many of the riggers in this 'branch' of our industry are not scaffolders either, in fact the training for the use of much of this equipment is just not available. (Another CISRS/NASC letdown discussion for another day?).
The support looks to be Lahyer or similar. The roof looks like a purpose built prefabricated structure that has to be assembled on-site at ground (or stage) level and is probably made of an alloy. On the pics of the fallen structure, many of the 'nodes' are not formed properly in that random elements of the frame do not assemble at one point but this could have been a result of the collapse and would need further on-site investigation.
I don't know but I would imagine the lifting process for the roof was done from three points, each side and the centre. The centre lifting beam did not appear to be in the centre either but angled to one side probably to accommodate other works in front of the stage.
Anyway, I could go on but what it all means is that people are being killed and our industry is being drawn into disrepute yet again.
I would love to see the method statements and the records of proof of competency for the erectors of these jobs and run an eye over them from a scaffolding safety aspect but I fear it will never happen.
I doubt very much that they existed in the first place!
Not sure about other jurisdictions but at least in Ireland any 'show' site is classed as a Construction site during the setting up phase and only switches away from that when it opens to the public. Of course as a construction site the construction regs, W&H regs and any amount of other H&S stuff applies.
It is also routinely breached as the scaffolder/riggers in Ireland will have a basic kwikstage scaffolder ticket at best but probably no qualification at all.
