# Stage collapse in Toronto



## JohnD

Just saw this at prosoundweb:
Downsview Park Stage Collapses Ahead Of Radiohead Concert In Toronto (PHOTOS)


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## iAdam

1 Person pronounced dead.
Show cancelled (obviously);
news article: Toronto News: One dead as Radiohead stage collapses before concert at Downsview Park - thestar.com


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## JohnD

Here is a photo before the collapse:


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## DuckJordan

1 dead as Radiohead stage collapses ahead of Toronto concert - Toronto - CBC News

Another news article

Count
1 dead
3 injured


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## DuckJordan

A couple are saying it was calm and not windy or inclimate. Sounds to me some company didn't know how to setup their stage. Or took shortcuts.

When are rental companies going to learn they are building structures not little light bars on t stands. GET IT RIGHT D*** IT!


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## avkid

CNN now has video shot by a local news helicopter.
1 killed when Toronto stage collapses before sold-out Radiohead concert - CNN.com


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## len

Enough is enough! How many people have to die in the name of someone's good time?


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## Aman121

It seems like this has been happening rather frequently, what is wrong with people? Why should money and time ever matter more than human life?


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## gafftapegreenia

Of All the stage collapses in, say, the last 24 months, have any two been the same in design or from the same company?

No show is worth a life!


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## ruinexplorer

I'm not sure that this accident happened as a result of lack of time or money. In setting up large outdoor events such as this, they don't go up in a day like many arena tours. However, there is a good possibility that there was some bad math done. We can speculate on the causes, there are many possibilities. We will most assuredly follow up with this as we did with the Indiana State Fair collapse.


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## Footer

gafftapegreenia said:


> Of All the stage collapses in, say, the last 24 months, have any two been the same in design or from the same
> 
> No show is worth a life!



This is not a thomas style roof like Indy. This looks like more of a mountain style stage. 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


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## venuetech

This photo shows mountain productions "Scaffold System with a Hercules Roof Grid and Video Support Towers"
it looks very similar to the Toronto staging


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## mstaylor

It looks like a Mountain stage except the head blocks are sitting on top of the tower instead of being captured in the structure. It looks like it pulled the head blocks as opposed to a hoist or roof failure. It must be some knockoff version of Mountain.


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## JohnD

At the prosoundweb forums, James Feenstra stated:
"stage is owned and operated by live nation, purchased from optex some years ago, nasco was the labor company hired to set it up."
Here is optex:
http://www.optexstaging.com/Home.10.0.html


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## shiben

Aman121 said:


> It seems like this has been happening rather frequently, what is wrong with people? Why should money and time ever matter more than human life?



Has it been happening any more frequently than before, or is that just media bias after Indiana? 

As for the question, the answer to that is complicated and convoluted, but the long and the short of it is, money is almost always more important than human life, especially to people in the business of making loads of it. This is not an endorsement of that reality, but recognition of the facts.


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## jstroming

shiben said:


> As for the question, the answer to that is complicated and convoluted, but the long and the short of it is, money is almost always more important than human life, especially to people in the business of making loads of it. This is not an endorsement of that reality, but recognition of the facts.



This is absolute B.S. I don't know one production or labor company owner who thinks that making a quick buck is more important than the life of a human being. And all of the bad publicity (both to the public AND potential clients), paperwork, man hours, lawsuits and lawyers that go with it. I have worked with Mountain, Upstaging, etc and they all take safety VERY seriously on the corporate level. It is usually the guys ON-SITE (be it with the staging company or local labor) who try to cut corners. 

That said, I use NASCO in virtually every city I go to on tour in Canada, and let me tell you, the canadians take safety VERY seriously. Alot more then most stagehand unions or companies in the US. First time I was on tour in canada, I was told I couldn't work a call (and I was the Video Director! haha) because I didn't have a hard hat that was rated, steel toe boots that were rated, and safety goggles that were rated.

You're just looking to rally against big companies, who considering the size, complexity, and potential for danger have MUCH better safety records than smaller companies. Probably because they have the large budgets to do so. Maybe you got treated badly by a production company, but most production company owners do care if the people who work for them die. It's insulting for you to insinuate differently, and claim your point as "fact".


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## FMEng

I would hope that local governments, venues, artists, and producers will start requiring temporary entertainment structures to be assembled under the direct supervision of a licensed structural engineer who specializes in it.


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## church

Each Canadian Province already requires a licenced engineer to design any structure except a simple house where the standard structural tables apply. In Ontario it is covered by the Professional Engineer's Act which was recently revised and made more restrictive to prevent workplace injuries etc. and this is much broader in its application than structural engineering

It will be interesting to see what the investigation reveals. However the Ontario government's official policy is "there is no such thing as an accident" and they will inevitably do something to prevent a re-occurence.


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## shiben

jstroming said:


> This is absolute B.S. I don't know one production or labor company owner who thinks that making a quick buck is more important than the life of a human being. And all of the bad publicity (both to the public AND potential clients), paperwork, man hours, lawsuits and lawyers that go with it. I have worked with Mountain, Upstaging, etc and they all take safety VERY seriously on the corporate level. It is usually the guys ON-SITE (be it with the staging company or local labor) who try to cut corners.
> 
> That said, I use NASCO in virtually every city I go to on tour in Canada, and let me tell you, the canadians take safety VERY seriously. Alot more then most stagehand unions or companies in the US. First time I was on tour in canada, I was told I couldn't work a call (and I was the Video Director! haha) because I didn't have a hard hat that was rated, steel toe boots that were rated, and safety goggles that were rated.
> 
> You're just looking to rally against big companies, who considering the size, complexity, and potential for danger have MUCH better safety records than smaller companies. Probably because they have the large budgets to do so. Maybe you got treated badly by a production company, but most production company owners do care if the people who work for them die. It's insulting for you to insinuate differently, and claim your point as "fact".



I dont think its just big companies or small companies or staging/entertainment companies. I was speaking to companies in general. Insinuating that is diverting from the real issue. How many companies with great safety records had all those protections in place before OSHA, insurance companies and a lawsuit happy public? None of the major reasons you mentioned to avoid incidents can be construed as genuine caring about individuals, but more accurately as caring about not loosing profits. I have no doubt that Mountain, Upstaging, and other companies have leadership that does care about their guys. And in fact, a lot, if not all of them probably personally care about health and safety. But to suggest that even a majority of companies do not have other motives in their embrace of safety is not terribly accurate from my view. 

FWIW, I actually think a lot of these staging companies are great. I worked with one the other day. Their guys cared about safety and going home in one piece at the end of the day. I was definitely speaking to a larger picture than a narrow segment of a specific industry.


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## ejsandstrom

Who here remembers all of the shark attacks during the late summer of 2001? That was all you saw on CNN, MSNBC, Fox blah blah blah. Then After the 11th of September you didnt hear about any more shark attacks. 

My point being, I am sure there are are still shark attacks all the time, but they are local news only. The 24hour news cycle has a list of say 50 things and if it on that list it gets reported on, once something new hits the top of the list the bottom one is pushed off and into a "let the locals report it" list. In 5 years one or two people a year will still get killed by some sort of stage malefaction, but only the industry people will hear about it. 

Who remembers when people were constantly getting trampled or killed by being stepped on at concerts? It was everywhere, now you never hear about it.


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## derekleffew

ejsandstrom said:


> ...Who remembers when people were constantly getting trampled or killed by being stepped on at concerts? It was everywhere, now you never hear about it.


<Raises hand.> I remember because I was almost there. Some dorm-mates were going, but I decided I couldn't afford the $11 or $14 or whatever the tickets were. The Who Concert Tragedy - Twenty Years Later Eventually, "festival seating" was outlawed, and concerts today are safer as a result.


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## ruinexplorer

FMEng said:


> I would hope that local governments, venues, artists, and producers will start requiring temporary entertainment structures to be assembled under the direct supervision of a licensed structural engineer who specializes in it.


This would kill this part of the industry. There aren't enough engineers to be available for all the structures being built. Either that, or a change would happen where the engineer wouldn't truly be qualified by the standards they are now.


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## len

The deceased is Radiohead's drum tech. Radiohead drum tech killed in stage collapse - CNN.com


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## MNicolai

These things are such one-off's and are just blips compared to the kinds of jobs most structural engineers are doing day-to-day. To get a structural engineer interested, you'd have to throw a lot of money at them. If it got to that extreme, it'd probably be cheaper to tour with an engineer than to hire a new one in every city. Even then, that only reduces the risk of failures after the structure is erected and still leaves some amount of risk in the process of erecting the structure.

As for news, this is a small industry. While I think there is more awareness in the media than there has been, plenty of accidents that are only covered by local news show up on these forums. It's a small enough industry that there's a chance with every incident that someone here at CB personally knows the people involved with the accident, even those reported only by local news.

The line that we use a lot here in the office is, "Same faces, different companies," because despite people moving between different companies over the years, the various players in our industry remain the same.

Regardless of how often these accidents happen versus how often they make national headlines, it doesn't change the fact that we're such a small industry that one person's death or injury can make regional or even national waves.

Just because the national media does or doesn't bite on a story doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing here on CB or putting under the scrutiny of our peers. That said, it's worth noting that there probably has not been a recent influx of these accidents, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think they were showing up on CB a lot more than they used to...


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## church

MNicolai said:


> These things are such one-off's and are just blips compared to the kinds of jobs most structural engineers are doing day-to-day. To get a structural engineer interested, you'd have to throw a lot of money at them. If it got to that extreme, it'd probably be cheaper to tour with an engineer than to hire a new one in every city. Even then, that only reduces the risk of failures after the structure is erected and still leaves some amount of risk in the process of erecting the structure.
> 
> As for news, this is a small industry. While I think there is more awareness in the media than there has been, plenty of accidents that are only covered by local news show up on these forums. It's a small enough industry that there's a chance with every incident that someone here at CB personally knows the people involved with the accident, even those reported only by local news.
> 
> The line that we use a lot here in the office is, "Same faces, different companies," because despite people moving between different companies over the years, the various players in our industry remain the same.
> 
> Regardless of how often these accidents happen versus how often they make national headlines, it doesn't change the fact that we're such a small industry that one person's death or injury can make regional or even national waves.
> 
> Just because the national media does or doesn't bite on a story doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing here on CB or putting under the scrutiny of our peers. That said, it's worth noting that there probably has not been a recent influx of these accidents, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think they were showing up on CB a lot more than they used to...



with many tours being international events it is very difficult for one engineer to cover every venue. To illustrate each Canadian Province licences their own engineers and you cannot practice in another province, an Ontario engineer cannot do structural work in the U.K. and vice versa.

I can also get a structural engineer to do work that requires only 1 hour of their time, not a problem at all, I just have to be prepared to pay for their time.


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## Footer

The real changes will take place when insurance for these type of shows gets so outrageous that you can no longer afford to do the gig. Either that, or the insurance companies will put so many requirements on these shows that they won't be feasible OR we will start doing things differently. Finally, you will start seeing bands do what ZZ Top just did... and that will probably have the largest affect.


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## gafftaper

I think, the real question to look at is one that has been discussed here in the past. Are promoters asking too much from portable staging systems? Do concerts need to scale down the tech of their outdoor shows and leave the big bad toys in the truck for use in theaters and stadiums with real pick points to hang from?


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## BillESC

I think Gaff nailed it. Why does production have to be of epic scale for one offs?


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## JohnD

Here is an updated article from CBC:
Radiohead company among 4 named in stage-collapse probe - Arts & Entertainment - CBC News
According to "unnamed sources", Upstaging who provided the lighting, there were concerns about the weight involved but the engineer said it was OK.
The article also points out that criminal charges have been ruled out and the full investigation could take a year.


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## gafftaper

From the end of the article linked above...

> "The thing that's unique about this type of facility is the speed that it goes up and the speed that it comes down. And it might very well be that the pace of the industry is just too fast to allow normal protocols to do their job," Toronto-based civil engineer David Bowick said.
> 
> Bowick added that temporary stages such as Radiohead's are inherently less robust. "Because of a lack of redundancy, a very small human error could precipitate a chain reaction."
> 
> Janet Sellery, a Stratford, Ont., safety consultant specializing in the arts, agreed that the pressure to produce flashy performances on a short turnaround could bear part of the blame. She also said inconsistent labour and safety standards are endangering those toiling behind the scenes at increasingly ambitious shows.



Yep.


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## gafftapegreenia

gafftaper said:


> From the end of the article linked above...
> 
> 
> Yep.




Yep indeed.


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## mstaylor

Evidently there were engineering plans approved beforehand. So that begs the question, was their numbers off, the shows numbers off or just not put together correctly.


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## ruinexplorer

PLASA just issued a statement about the collapse.


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## DuckJordan

mstaylor said:


> Evidently there were engineering plans approved beforehand. So that begs the question, was their numbers off, the shows numbers off or just not put together correctly.



or things were not loaded as intended or as to the plans. More than once I've seen carps come in and ask for a different lineset because "It looks a bit too close" when we went off their exact specs.


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## JohnD

Radiohead to delay part of tour:
Radiohead postpone portion of European tour - MSN Music News


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## cmckeeman

Charges have been filed for the collapse


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## JD

Stage Collapse That Killed Radiohead Drum Tech Results in 13 Charges of Negligence --- By: Jordan Sargent July 06, 2015 8:16 PM

Live Nation has been charged with crimes stemming from a 2012 incident in which a stage collapsed before a Radiohead concert in Toronto, killing drum technician Scott Johnson. According to the Toronto Star, the charges were announced by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour nearly one year to the day of the tragedy, which injured three others aside from Johnson. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Ministry of Labour alleges that two Canadian subsidiaries of Live Nation did not ensure that the stage was constructed and monitored in a fashion that was safe for workers. Live Nation Canada and Live Nation Ontario Concerts were each tagged with four charges — the ministry also charged Optex Staging & Services Inc. with four counts and engineer Domenic Cugliari with one, bringing the total to 13.

Live Nation released a statement saying that it “wholeheartedly” disagrees with the charges, and that it did everything in its power to make sure the area was safe. Ministry spokesman Matt Blajer told the Star that each charge carries a maximum fine of $500,000 for a corporation or $250,000 or up to a year in prison for an individual. If Live Nation is convicted on all charges, it could face up to $4 million in penalties. Earlier this year, the concert giant reported revenue of $5.8 billion.

The incident occurred June 16, 2012 at Toronto’s Downsview Park. Johnson — a well-known drum tech who had also worked with bands Portishead and Elbow — was reportedly crushed under debris when the stage crumpled. Radiohead canceled the sold-out show, rescheduled seven dates, and issued a statement remembering Johnson as a “lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny.” A month later the band returned to the stage in Nice, France, where they honored Johnson with onstage projections.
(Article has tons of spam so direct click at own risk. Everything important above)
http://www.spin.com/2013/06/live-nation-charged-radiohead-stage-collapse/


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## gafftaper

JD said:


> If Live Nation is convicted on all charges, it could face up to $4 million in penalties. Earlier this year, the concert giant reported revenue of $5.8 billion.



As was said in the discussion above, it's all about money. $4 million in penalties is just the cost of doing business to companies like this. It's not as bad as the death at MGM where the OSHA fine was only a few thousand dollars, but it's still just pocket change to Live Nation.


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## scott407

This is why mobile stages have become so popular. Their wind ratings, roof weight limits, and stage limits are fixed and known. They could have used one of the SAM's from Stageline.


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## JohnD

Bringing this back up after reading THIS.
Short version, in 2013 13 charges were filed against Live Nation, Optex Staging and Domenic Cugliari, the engineer who signed off on the design.
In 2017 a judge stayed all the charges. It seems that by taking so long to go to trial the rights of the accused had been violated.


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## ruinexplorer

That is just wrong.


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## Dionysus

And there is currently a lockout of IATSE employees in Toronto, where scab workers are being used and following unsafe work practices which have been reported to the ministry of labour who has done nothing.


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## Jay Ashworth

MNicolai said:


> Just because the national media does or doesn't bite on a story doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing here on CB or putting under the scrutiny of our peers. That said, it's worth noting that there probably has not been a recent influx of these accidents, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think they were showing up on CB a lot more than they used to...



The converse of Mike's observation, "just because an incident *does* show up on CB doesn't mean it has general interest or applicability across the industry" is also true.

This particular confimation bias is getting more and more common, and most people aren't positioned to properly identify it as the result of getting the raw, instead of something cooked through a news director somewhere -- it used to be that hearing something on the national news meant it was Actually Important...


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## BillConnerFASTC

Jay Ashworth said:


> something cooked through a news director somewhere



So, it's fake news?


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## Jay Ashworth

C'mon, Bill, you know better than that.

The *importance to the general public* of a piece of news is something that's traditionally been the province of local print editors and news directors; if something made the national news, it's because one of those gatekeepers ran it, and then either a bunch of other local guys decided to take it off the wire and run it too.

Or a national news editor, with the larger weight of his job on his shoulders, did so.

That intermediation has been removed now, making it difficult for those not schooled in the art to have a good feeling for what's *actually* important. People who want the raw but can't handle it, and hence overreact to it give me hives. An example is subscribers to my local news stringer on FB, who commonly go on about "oh, my ghod; the world is so much more violent now" when a) that's factually, numerically provably incorrect -- it's very much the opposite, and b) they think that *because they asked for the raw, and they can't handle it (handling it being defined as "knowing what the existence of specific news stories actually means, strategically).

Fake news, on the other hand, is things which are not only not news, but not *true*; they're made up lies, or stories stretched (usually by the headline) to imply things they don't actually imply.

Which ever definition of Fake News you like, though, it's got nothing whatever to do with what I was talking about.


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## BillConnerFASTC

Seems like "cooked through a news director" doesn't sound a lot different from 

Jay Ashworth said:


> they're made up lies, or stories stretched (usually by the headline) to imply things they don't actually imply



And my comment was just intended as a humorous quip based on current events and the news, which, more seriously, is mostly driven by ratings.


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## Jay Ashworth

I'm sorry you think so. In this case, "cooked" is merely the opposite of "raw", measuring the degree to which a news story is processed through a traditional news organization.

It has nothing to do with the "cooked the books" sort of meaning.

If you're trying to imply that traditional news organizations are... hmmm... the enemy of the people? Then we're done on that topic.

Sorry; it's a topic on which I have *zero* sense of humor.


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## FMEng

[off topic] The traditional news media is extremely important to the survival of our nation. Unless most people get and trust in accurate facts, then we cannot hold politicians accountable and solve problems. Facts are facts, and the traditional news media generally gets it right. Reliance on heavily slanted news sources or citizen journalists (FB, Twitter, Fox, Huffpost, etc.) is dangerous.

The other factor is that newspapers are often the original reporters, along with public radio. That is where the stories come from. Often, TV and web news organizations are simply repeating stories from the original reporters. TV and web journalists seldom come up with anything new on their own, with the possible exception of ambulance chasing. The problem is newspapers are struggling financially and laying off staff. If you want to have strong, reliable journalism, support your local newspaper and public radio station.

Full disclosure: I work for a public radio station that is an NPR affiliate. Having watched our reporters and editors work, I have the highest regard for them.


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## MNicolai

Not often this happens for these kinds of incidents but an official investigation report has surfaced. An interesting, albeit damning read.

As usual, people die not when 1 thing goes wrong but when 10 things go wrong.


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## egilson1

Just read the report. wow.


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## MNicolai

egilson1 said:


> Just read the report. wow.



Yeah --

"Not for lack of trying..." is what comes to mind.


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## cbrandt

I'm floored by what was missed by the engineers.


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## TimMc

More info, grant of standing, inquest to resume...

http://www.digitalityworks.com/Viewers/ViewIssue.aspx?IssueID=204&PageNo=11

Link courtesy Dave Scarlett via prosoundweb.com's Live Audio Board


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## TimMc

But wait, there's more....

From CBC, a report from the Coroner's Inquest.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/stage...arts-that-didn-t-exist-witness-says-1.5082347

Link courtesy of Shane Ervin, at PSW Live Audio Board.


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## ruinexplorer

Thank you for sharing. That was an interesting read.


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## TimMc

ruinexplorer said:


> Thank you for sharing. That was an interesting read.



The Thornton-Tomasetti report on the Indiana State Fair blowdown was hosted on the Indiana state website but search links now take you to the state fair page... but the T-T report was a stunning read. A willingness to accommodate client requests, inadequate engineering, improper assembly, fuzzy chain of authority and command pre-disaster... lots of fingers to point in many directions.

These things don't happen by accident - the potential for structural failure of any component or assembly can be modeled and predicted. The failures - and subsequent personal injuries and deaths - occur because of human factors.


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## egilson1

The preliminary results of the coroner's inquest are out. licensing and certification recommendations are the big thing coming out of it 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/radiohead-show-inquest-reconvenes-1.5092146


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## JohnD

Update:
Engineer in fatal Radiohead stage collapse guilty of professional misconduct (yahoo.com)

Radiohead response:
Radiohead Release Statement on Fatal 2012 Stage Collapse - InsideHook


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## Robert

One thought that came to my mind, after dealing with the loss of a fellow crew member, was the list of witnesses and those that became involved in this investigation. We should all take note at the extent of the list and the possible liability assigned to each and every position on that crew. We should never take lightly the responsibility that we are given or underestimate the consequences of our actions. Just saying.....


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## Jay Ashworth

JohnD said:


> Update:
> Engineer in fatal Radiohead stage collapse guilty of professional misconduct (yahoo.com)
> 
> Radiohead response:
> Radiohead Release Statement on Fatal 2012 Stage Collapse - InsideHook



Neither of those pieces seem to explain *why* that process took 2,922 days to come to a conclusion...


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