I've been particularly bothered by the tragedy at the Indiana State Fair Saturday night. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, it's local. It's somewhere I've driven by countless times. I've been to the fair itself numerous times, and was there last Thursday. Second, a good friend of mine was at the concert. She was in the front row for the same concert last year, and had thought about trying to get closer this year. Third, I'm a musician and work in concert production. Between attending and working, I've been around hundreds of stages and concerts. In other words, I and or people I know could had easily been involved and hurt. So for all these reasons, this hits close to home.

When I heard about what happened, I wish I could say I was more surprised. This is what angers me. I don't believe this was an unpreventable, freak accident. I believe this tragedy should not have happened.

Years ago on tour, I witnessed a lighting rig collapse. This happened indoors, with no wind or any other factors to set it off. Fortunately, no one was on stage at the time (or at least not in harm's way). I remember that it punched a hole in the stage and damaged a keyboard though. We were lucky it didn't happen in the middle of sound check or the concert. However it could have been different. I or members of a popular band or others could potentially not be here anymore.

A big part of what bothers me is that there seems to be little to nothing in place (in most cases) to prevent this kind of accident. I believe anybody or any company can go purchase sound, lighting, and staging equipment and set it up without anyone ever checking on it being safe (with exceptions I'll mention in a moment). As another example, a couple of years ago, the band I worked with was scheduled to play a show at a festival. Apparently the stage had been set up poorly enough that the headlining band refused to go on for sound check until it had been fixed. I'm guessing no one in the band was an engineer, so if it looked bad enough to an untrained eye, it doesn't seem likely that it passed any sort of formal inspection.

In the case of bigger productions such as the size of the one at the State Fair, I believe there is a certain amount of internal and industry standards, such as weight limits, which companies attempt to adhere to. In other words, they have some general rules to follow, and have to assume that things will be safe if they keep to them. However, I'm not sure that these things are actually ever checked by structural engineers—the kind of people who would actually know if there could be problems or not.

For the State Fair tragedy specifically, there seems to have been two failures which allowed this tragedy to happen. First, the stage should not have collapsed under these conditions. Second, the stage and concert area should have been evacuated.

In regards to the stage collapse, I'm sure that people will be investigating the technical details in order to figure out why it happened. However it seems to me that some better form of regulation and oversight are needed. Apparently, Indianapolis (as well as certain other cities) do have applicable regulations. However, though the fair grounds are in Indianapolis, they are property of the state and therefore not under Indianapolis jurisdiction. And there is apparently no state or national regulations.

In any case, these were apparently winds consistent with a common Midwest thunderstorm, not a direct tornado hit or anything. In other words, while one wouldn't necessarily expect this to survive a tornado or hurricane, it should have been able to withstand the type of weather which was experienced. To support this, no other significant damage was reported from this storm as far as I'm aware.

This is at least the fourth staging collapse in only six weeks!¹ The other incidents luckily weren't as harmful, though obviously if things like this are happening this often, it's only a matter of time until someone is "unlucky". I strongly feel that these facts reinforces the point that the tragedy at the State Fair wasn't an isolated, freak accident. Rather, the industry as a whole needs to be safer.

Not only should the stage have not collapsed, it sounds like people should have been evacuated from the area before hand. The storm itself was no surprise, and neither were the winds. They were both predicted and witnessed ahead of the storm². The weather situation was such that concert itself had apparently been stopped for a half-hour or so before the collapse of stage. Yet in all this time, the fans and others were never instructed to seek better shelter. In fact, shortly before the tragedy, the MC had made an announcement that the show would go on. While he made mention of the buildings people could seek shelter in if it became necessary, the audience were told that there was still time (15 minutes I believe) before the storm arrived. However by the time this announcement was made, the weather was already getting bad. In fact, one reason I believe there are so many photos and videos of the stage collapse is because people were taking pictures of the approaching storm. Apparently, the pictures of the storm don't do it justice. There was a cloud of dust blowing toward the stage, and it was bad enough that some thought they were witnessing a tornado.³

So the question remains, why hadn't an evacuation been given before this, especially since the concert had been on hold for a while already? I grant that a stage collapse had probably crossed few people's mind. As mentioned, that shouldn't have happened. I also understand that here in the Midwest, we live through a couple of dozen severe thunderstorms a year without incident. Of course in almost all these cases we are inside a building or at least inside a vehicle and therefore better protected from the elements. But it is a different matter when outside and when in charge of a large crowd's safety. It has been noted that some of the rides at the fair were shut down before the storm, and people attending an outdoor concert at nearby Conner Prairie were instructed to return to their vehicles. So it seems that those in charge of the concert at the State Fair made the mistake of hesitating and waiting too long to get people to a safer location.

I grieve for all those affected by this tragedy. Not only have five people died so far, my understanding is that about half of the other 45 or so injured have serious, potentially life threatening injuries. Those who do survive my have long term pains or other health problems as a result. I believe I remember hearing that one boy may be paralyzed for instance. In addition to this, there is the psychological trauma experienced by the witnesses. In one of the videos, you can hear all the audience scream in horror as they helpless watch tons of equipment fall and crush the crowd of fans. A witness said that they are amazed that only five people have died, because it looked much worse. Many who viewed this incident are struggling to cope with what they saw. Beyond this is of course the many families and friends of those who were injured. It is also no doubt weighing heavily on the musicians who were both nearly victims and also feel terrible for the pain experienced by the fans who had come to see them perform. This tragedy has affected and is affecting hundreds of people.

I am cautious about criticizing, because I understand it is both easy to do in retrospect, and easy to do without being in the situation and knowing all of the factors involved. However, the information I've gathered definitely seems to point to the conclusion that this should not have happened, because the stage should not have collapsed and there should not have been people in harm's way even if it did. So it seems greater scrutiny is needed regarding staging and rigging, and that severe weather plans need to be followed more closely. While things should have been safer long ago, it would be an outrage against those affected by this tragedy to not make things safer from now on.

Footnotes:
1 http://www.indystar.com/article/20110816/NEWS15/108160318/Inspections-not-required-outdoor-stages
2 http://www.indystar.com/article/20110817/NEWS15/108170327/Despite-weather-warnings-fair-concert-went-on
3 Additional source: witness of tragedy.