UPDATE: I wasn’t sure it was going to go in this direction, but design expert John Huntington is now saying the Indiana State Fair has blood on their hands.
http://www.controlgeek.net/blo…
It’s tempting to call the stage collapse in Indiana this week a tragedy. It was certainly a tragic loss for the families of the dead and injured, that much is true. On the other hand, it appears that the organizers of the show should have known enough to evacuate the area, and especially to get the light operators down from the structure, before there was any loss of life. They had plenty of advance warning, and a nearby outdoor concert was evacuated in time based on the same information.
Whether the stage collapse was due to a fluke, unpredictable gust of wind known as a gustnado, and whether the force could have been anticipated, will undoubtedly be investigated in the coming weeks and months.
A different human tragedy, though, is entirely manmade, and could be easily remedied.
One of the concertgoers killed in the collapse was Christina Santiago, who had become known in the Chicago community as a dedicated advocate for gay women’s health care. Santiago, 29, was a program manager at the Howard Brown Health Center, which provides health and services for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.
It was reported on Facebook and Dailykos yesterday that the local coroner’s office was refusing to release the body to Santiago’s legally married spouse, Alisha Brennan, because of Indiana’s discriminatory marriage laws. This appears to be incorrect. In fact, the groups concerned with Santiago, Brennan, and their family are reportedly working with the coroner’s office to obtain release of the body.
Still, the bolded language above deserves special attention. Even in the face of a legal marriage, this government agency has determined that Santiago’s aunt is her next of kin. Would this be tolerated, or even suggested, if this were a married heterosexual couple?
To even ask the question is to answer it. It’s encouraging that this situation appears to be on its way to a resolution, and the coroner’s office appears to be handling it with sensitivity. Nevertheless, can someone explain to me how the public interest or family values are served by refusing to recognize this marriage?
Note: all the technical information about the storm and outdoor stage construction posted or referred to here comes from John Huntington, a colleague of my son at City Technical College in Brooklyn.
there’s no way it was properly constructed. If this is the standard, it’s time to force a change.
It sort of reminds me of the tragedy way back in the ’70’s that forced the end of “open seating” at rock concerts.
How troubling it is that the family’s private tragedy has been compounded by this controversy.
I was at my Union meeting (IASTE, the stagehand union) on Monday and our local’s president read a letter from the International calling for standards to be adopted in the design and erection of temporary outdoor stages.
This is the third stage to collapse in just the last two months! One in Oklahoma and one in Ontario.
That stage in Indianapolis was HUGE and had tons of lights and sound hanging from it. There should have been no discussion, no questions: the area should have been evacuated when that storm was spotted heading for the venue.
The roof structure was still intact after the collapse, that indicates it was designed well, but the joints where the vertical supports met the roof truss and the anchors used to keep the verticals vertical are the suspected problems. I’ve seen temp stages where the producers didn’t order enough rigid Cheseboros and used one rigid and one swivel per joint. Well, swivel Cheseboros aren’t going to provide stability in that usage. This hardware is forged steel and rated for 17,000 pounds! Just imagine how much tension was on all of those joints for it to break many of those…
Usually it’s the greedy promoters that refuse to cancel a concert despite clear indications of danger, and they over-rule the venue, emergency officials and labor unions because ‘the show must go on’.