Tuesday, 16 August 2011

In Passing

Ill Wind


Don’t have a lot to say coverage-wise about Saturday night’s wind-induced stage rigging collapse at the Indiana State Fair.  I was home watching the radar as the storm moved through, and wound up following the coverage (of which more anon) until the 1:30am press conference.  Gary Welsh has three videos up (and a follow up post), and Roberta has some thoughts here.  Would note (as Roberta does) that the collapse involved only the stage’s roof and rigging (the stage itself is a concrete podium), not that it makes any difference to those killed and injured.  Would also note with gratitude (and a bit of amazement) the hundreds of audience members who rushed forward to help rescue those trapped beneath the wreckage.

Meanwhile, brace yourselves for endless post-mortems (and litigation), along with the usual number of uninformed comments.  The classic so far: "Structures don't come crashing down in storms, absent negligence.” O RLY?  I wonder what folks in Joplin, Missouri (or, more relevantly, Ottawa) would say about that.

Since there’s no chance that I’ll be asked to do an engineering evaluation of what happened, I’m free to engage in my own uninformed speculation:  From my viewing of the videos, I would say the 60-mph wind gust was trapped under the stage’s roof, which lifted the entire structure.  The lifting appears to have caused the vertical trusses on the audience-left side to separate, and once that happened, the whole thing could only go over.

Elsewhere:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:02:18 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It could have been a lot worse.  Despite promises that the show would go on, a lot of people left before the collapse.  Which suggests that it was fairly obvious that something was awry -- and I suspect I would have been pretty uneasy about being under such a structure with a big nasty thunderstorm heading my way.

There's plenty of room for litigation, and from what I'm reading, it's already begun.

Posted by: Nathan at 08/16/11 12:48:03 (cBrDo)

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