# Arbor crash with pics from reddit



## techieman33 (Dec 28, 2014)

> So the other day while we were tearing down the set of our musical our tech director told some guys to take a sign off of one of our fly lines. They took it off and flew out the bar, and then someone, we don't know who, thought "Hey, we just took that sign off, we should take some wight off". Well they took off the wight that was on the line and about half of the yellow safety weights that you NEVER take off. I'm sure you can see where this is going. One of the guys who took the sign off initially, remembered that there was some lighting cable on the bar that needed to come off, so he went over to the flys and opened it up. Now I've dealt with flys out of weight before, but this one was about 125ish lbs out of weight. The bar came crashing down and luckily everyone was out of the way except for a trash can that got squashed. When the bar hit the can it sounded like a gunshot and the wight system crashed into the top of the fly column and ripped the wire pulleys off the ceiling, witch threw fly weights (25lbs each) out of the system and onto the stage and I kid you not those things bounced. It totaled the line witch would have costed $7000-$9000 to fix. Our Tech Director was not happy. As for the kid who opened the fly, he tried to stop it, and it ripped skin off of his hands and left some nasty burns. No one will fess up to taking the weights off, I'm very glad nobody got hurt...



Pictures: http://imgur.com/gallery/3jlld/new

Originalpost on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/techtheatre/comments/2qlfo6/guess_what_happens_when_a_fly_is_around_125_lbs/


----------



## de27192 (Dec 28, 2014)

techieman33 said:


> No one will fess up to taking the weights off



That part really annoys me. Everyone makes mistakes now and then, if you can't hold your hands up and say "sorry that was me" then you're not fit to work in this environment.

HOWEVER, moreover, if the technical director has so little control over the get out that he doesn't know who is in loading bridge and who is on the rail... then I'd question whether he's fit to work in that environment either. If you're in a state where you've got an assortment of people running round using the fly system willy nilly with no control, of course there will be accidents. You're supposed to control that.

The fact that nobody knows who was controlling a lineset - either the tech admitting it, or the TD knowing at all.. is worrying; and that kind of lacklustre approach to flys is not tolerable.


----------



## AudJ (Dec 28, 2014)

Am I wrong to assume there was no loading bridge, and they were loading at stage level? Not sure how else it could run as described with too little weight. Seems like TD beyond-average attention would be required if that is the case.


----------



## de27192 (Dec 28, 2014)

Ah yes read again, it does sound like weights removed at stage level. You should still have a method of managing this. Lifting operations can be dangerous and if controlling people working on flys when the bars are dead out is too much work for one TD, then a flyman to assist should be appointed. Whilst you have heavy bars over peoples heads there should never be a situation where any man and his dog can just get stuck in and start pulling weights out, you are asking for trouble.


----------



## LavaASU (Dec 28, 2014)

This is also why I was taught you always ALWAYS wear gloves when running counterweight flies. Your instinct (baring tons of training at least) will be to grab the line... gloves will help keep your hands from getting torn off. Also with gloves it's possible to use friction to slow a lineset and in most cases if an imbalance is less than your weight hold it until help arrives (been there, done that, wish I knew who effed up the weighting).


----------



## BillConnerFASTC (Dec 28, 2014)

I know of a few instances where someone held on and bought the farm when they hit something on the way up.


----------



## DuckJordan (Dec 28, 2014)

Man this looks really close to me. sacoa rigging arbor, socoa style install. and the USD sweatshirt on one of those kids makes me believe its somewhere close.


----------



## de27192 (Dec 28, 2014)

LavaASU said:


> This is also why I was taught you always ALWAYS wear gloves when running counterweight flies. Your instinct (baring tons of training at least) will be to grab the line...



I think this depends on your influences when learning etc... I come from a stage engineering (design/manufacture/install) background and my instinct when I see anything moving out of control is to keep my fingers as far from the moving parts as physically possible. Working with saws, grinders, etc as well as stage machinery, it's just engrained that moving things and fingers don't mix and thus that's my instinct. 

As an aside - the glove argument is debatable too. An advantage of wearing gloves is of course that a rope burn is much less likely if you do instinctively grab a rope or even just mis-handle it. However on the contrary, gloves being a stronger material than skin means that if some kind of sharp edge or debris from the counterweight system were to snag in your glove, it could pull it. In the best case scenario, that would mean you lose your glove. In a worse case scenario, it would pull your arm in. And worse still it could pull your body inwards, which means shoulders and yes, then your head, towards the moving parts. And I don't need to explain why that's bad. With bare skin, yes you'll get a nasty cut or burn, but there's much less potential for anything to snag or get caught that could drag your limbs into the moving parts of the system, which, with a bit of momentum, could easily kill you.


----------



## Amiers (Dec 28, 2014)

After reading the comments on the reddit I am glad nobody got hurt. Looking at the pictures I wonder if the safety weight is for the baton and the added weight was for the curtain track and whatever else was on there and they just didn't have any other bricks left*shrug*. 7 @ 25 for the baton and 26 @ 25 ( yellow and black bricks) is a lot of weight not to take off after taking everything off but the track. I would be very curious as to know what else was on the pipe.


----------



## porkchop (Dec 29, 2014)

There are quite a few issues obviously, not the least of which is why there isn't enough supervision of the loading rail. But a few things that are less obvious come to mind rapidly:

In the first picture there appears to be batten weight banded onto the bottom of the arbors (probably a good idea), but on top of that there are more yellow bricks. I obviously don't know the theatre's policies, but this seems like it could easily cause confusion. I can see how the addition of curtain track or some other system that could be considered semi-permanent might make a TD want to change your batten weight to include that system, but if you're going to add weight to the batten that should not removed either reband it or don't have any banding on the arbor at all. Either way there should be no situation where you have bricks marked the same as your permanent ones that are normally removed and you should also not have different systems marking bricks as permanent, especially not on the same arbor.

There are only two spreader bars on the arbor. Is that really all it's designed for? Was the top spreader plate with the stopper used properly after the arbor was unloaded? Originally I had several more rhetorical questions typed out, but they made too many assumptions to include.

The worst part in my mind is that in the kid's comment after a lot of the same questions we're asking he continues to try any point blame and defend current practices rather than discuss ways to prevent this from happening in the future:

> Ok, I know you think us high schoolers are all idiots, we are not, and I do realize that people almost died and that flies are very very dangerous. All of us know how flies work except for probably the freshman who have been instructed NOT to touch them, because of this very reason. As for the orange lock plate they never screwed it back down, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was and the collision made it come off. And as for my TD, he does train us in everything we do and this was NOT his fault, I know none of the upperclassmen would do something like this so stupid.



You wonder why the offending person won't fess up. This is not just their fault. It's a problem of how things are done in that theatre. There was a situation where someone would eventually fail, they just happened to be the one to do it.


----------



## gafftapegreenia (Dec 29, 2014)

In the original post the kid says that someone got skin ripped off and rope burns, but that he's "very glad that nobody got hurt". Um, hello! That's an injury, one often serious enough to require hospital visits. That pretty much tells me all I need to know about the culture of that place. 

Also, do I detected a bit of KOTB Syndrome from that guy?


----------



## BillConnerFASTC (Dec 29, 2014)

Seems to be about a 6' arbor and a plate every 2' seems correct. Don't know if they were spaced that way when it crashed. Interesting to note the steel banding apparently didn't survive though no telling in the after arbor photo what has been done. I have trouble believing those cables all failed. Surprised a little by Crosbies because it does look a lot like SECOA and they rarely don't use nico press sleaves, at least on 1/4" lines. More facts needed, but clearly operator error.


----------



## AudJ (Dec 29, 2014)

The cables are suspicious to me also. I wonder if the arbor didn't break loose, just the weight. The cables look like they may have been cut to remove the dangling arbor after the fact? 

Even if 8 cables couldn't hold the falling of 125lbs, the shear pattern would look a lot different. Op describes falling pulleys, which to me implies the cable held, and ripped them down.

It bothers me a little that this system seems to top out on 1 side of the arbor, instead of center or both sides. I think the arbor may have held the weight if it wasn't racked so badly at the top. I suppose at that point, it was all coming down anyway, run for your life... Thank God all are alive.


----------



## epimetheus (Dec 29, 2014)

I bet the TD is just thrilled this got posted online. Looks to me (a very uneducated eye when it comes to rigging) like the arbor was removed from the system after the runaway for the pic with the kid holding it. I would expect the cables to be frayed more if they were sheared/cut/whatever as a result of the incident. Shouldn't everything have been shut down and dropped where it was for an investigation before further action was taken?


----------



## BillConnerFASTC (Dec 29, 2014)

epimetheus said:


> I bet the TD is just thrilled this got posted online. Looks to me (a very uneducated eye when it comes to rigging) like the arbor was removed from the system after the runaway for the pic with the kid holding it. I would expect the cables to be frayed more if they were sheared/cut/whatever as a result of the incident. Shouldn't everything have been shut down and dropped where it was for an investigation before further action was taken?


Yes - I concur - it would have been more instructive if they had left it as it was - but no knowing if that left a dangerous condition and cutting it down was the best choice. Sure which I'd seen a block falling. Last I heard of an actual destructive test of a typical 500 or 750 pound rated loft block failed around 100,000 pounds. Also, when a wire rope fails, it's almost always at the clip - right tight too it - because only if a couple of percent t it's the weakest point.

As far as "...top out on 1 side of the arbor, instead of center or both sides...", that is how a batten heavy run away fails - they hit the top stop and the guide side stops, and the rest parallelograms. Arbor heavy usually deforms the lock rail.

Feels like there is a lot more to this.


----------



## porkchop (Dec 29, 2014)

Looks like someone realized this was probably going nowhere good as the post has now been removed from the sub-reddit.


----------



## ptero (Dec 29, 2014)

Regarding the photo of the undamaged arbor: My impression (assumption) is that it does NOT show the one that was destroyed. I take it to be of an undamaged arbor for illustration purposes. I stumble on how and why such a good shot exists of the damaged one from before the event. With that assumption, we're just guessing how the destroyed one was loaded and banded.


----------



## tjrobb (Dec 29, 2014)

Deleted


----------



## What Rigger? (Jan 6, 2015)

BillConnerASTC said:


> I know of a few instances where someone held on and bought the farm when they hit something on the way up.



I have found out the hard way why a lock rail is sometimes called a toe rail, and stopped myself from floating away to certain doom. As for this arbor crash: someone f*cked up real bad.


----------



## StradivariusBone (Jan 7, 2015)

BillConnerASTC said:


> Surprised a little by Crosbies because it does look a lot like SECOA and they rarely don't use nico press sleaves, at least on 1/4" lines.



We actually had cast cable clips on our SECOA system that were replaced about 10-12 years ago with forged. Not sure why they went that route, but I'd heard there were contractors that did a lot of the final install, maybe just ignored what SECOA spec'd?


----------



## TechGeek (Jan 7, 2015)

I worked in a high school in my area with no loading gallery... your school at least colored the weights that had to stay. The school I worked with you would take the weight off little at a time and check the line to see how out of weight it was. We tried to keep it down to around 7 people running the fly's, 2 lighting techs, 1 sound tech (hanging mics), 3 scenic artists/riggers, and the Stage Manager.

The high school I'm working with right now has locking Rope locks which only the facilities mangers have a key to. The most important sets get locked no matter what, like the Main Drape, electrics, and hanging mics. During shows and events when there is scenery rigged all of the line sets with scenery get locked as well. It keeps idiots out of trouble.

Someone could have gotten really hurt if not killed during this accident. You guys got very luck. This is why only people trained to use the fly should be near it.


----------



## gafftaper (Jan 8, 2015)

epimetheus said:


> Shouldn't everything have been shut down and dropped where it was for an investigation before further action was taken?


OSHAand most state laws only cover employee safety, students are typically not covered. Furthermore, since the only injuries were a skinned hand, it's unlikely that there would be any inspection unless the school district hired a company to do it. Which is unlikely in most school districts.


----------



## StradivariusBone (Jan 9, 2015)

gafftaper said:


> OSHAand most state laws only cover employee safety, students are typically not covered. Furthermore, since the only injuries were a skinned hand, it's unlikely that there would be any inspection unless the school district hired a company to do it. Which is unlikely in most school districts.



In my experience what could happen here is a parent or community member might react to the Reddit posting and then shoot an email up the chain somewhere, which would be gas on the fire. A lot of people in the public education field have a mindset that the "customer/parent is always right" and that frequently trumps a rational approach to a given situation. 

Our school district has their own Safety to Life office and per insurance regs we would be required to fill out an accident report if something like this happens. Accident reports get filed anytime a student is injured (basically if it's at the point where they feel the need to see a doctor- splinters OK, stitches not OK). We do have students who are also employees, but I don't know specifically how OSHA pertains to them. I would assume the regs apply, but enforcement might be selective. I personally operate under the mindset that all kids working in my building (paid or not) deserve the safe environment that OSHA mandates.

I can't speak directly to the law or mandate, but I've heard time and time again that public schools have some sort of exemption from a lot of the fire code and OSHA regs that dictate how private industry operates. From what I've seen, we basically police ourselves on that stuff. I'm not saying that's the truth or law, but that's the attitude I've seen on numerous occasions.


----------

