Radiohead Cancels Toronto Concert after Fan Killed in Stage Collapse

[Nickdfresh]

Stage collapses before Radiohead show in Toronto; 1 dead
June 16, 2012, 5:15 PM EST

RollingStone.com (http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=736882)

The stage at Downsview Park in Toronto collapsed Saturday afternoon and killed one person just hours before Radiohead were scheduled to play to a sold-out crowd, CBC News reports.

Three others were injured. One person was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital in serious condition while two others were being assessed at the scene, according to CBC.

Toronto fire captain Mike Strapko told CNN that a "scaffolding-type structure collapsed" some 40 to 60 feet about the main stage area as the victims were setting up for the concert around 4 p.m. There were no strong winds or other dangerous weather conditions at the time.

The band was not onstage at the time and the concert has been cancelled. A statement on Radiohead's website says that tickets will be refunded, and advises fans not to make their way to the venue.

The accident comes after a number of recent stage collapses at high profile shows raised concerns about safety at concerts. Seven people were killed at the Indiana State Fair last August when high winds knocked down scaffolding and speakers.

Last Saturday, the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas was shut down by wind storms, forcing the cancellation of some headlining sets.

[FORD]

What the fuck is going on with this shit?

One such event is a random tragedy, but several within a year?

Are these bands all hiring the same bunch of incompetent jackoffs to set up their stages? :(

[Nitro Express]

My dad used to have a scaffolding business. All the stuff he rented out was MADE IN USA Safeco scaffolding. The same shit they built the towers at Woodstock out of. Sometimes entertainment companies rented from him. You could load that stuff up with pallets of brick if set up to the manufacturers specs. It was a lucrative business but the liability insurance just got too expensive because you have no control over how people use your product. so my dad sold it off.

When we lived in Hong Kong the workers there would lash together bamboo poles and make scaffolding that way. They refused to work on steel scaffolding because they said it could buckle and didn't trust it. They would go 30 stories up with that bamboo stuff and a typoon hit and the bamboo scaffolding held while the steed stuff collapsed.

I see one of two problems at these concerts. One the scaffolding is set up wrong. If you go up to a certain height you have to have guide cables and they have to be set up a certain way. Or their footings are poor. Scaffolding is just like a building, you have to have a good foundation or you are screwed. Soft ground will cause it to sink and you have to set it up on planks of wood to give it a bigger footprint. Or it's just crappy scaffolding made overseas. A lot of bolts coming out of China say they are to a certain spec but they aren't. They have had failures due to imported bolts not made to the specs that are on the bolt heads. The same shit could happen with scaffolding. Poor welds. Poor metallurgy. Thin tubing. So either the setup is out of spec or the scaffolding is.

[So this is love]

Yeah wtf it was their last show of the tour...damn bad luck!

[sadaist]

STOP! buying scaffolding at Walmart!

[Nitro Express]

STOP! buying scaffolding at Walmart!

LOL! I was helping frame up a house and my California Framer hammer got stolen. The closest store was Wal-Mart so I went in and bought a framing hammer. The steel in the head was so soft it deformed. I wore that hammer out and broke it in three hours. The head came loose in a half hour so I soaked it in water and then the steel face deformed. It was like it was made of pewter or something. What a piece of shit. I can only imagine what Wal-Mart scaffolding would be like. Oh yeah that's what I would love to have holding up heavy light trusses and speakers above my head.

[Nitro Express]

I remember looking at a photo of the Grateful Dead's wall of sound PA. I was thinking if I was one of the drummers I would shit a brick having that big speaker suspended above my head. If it came loose you would be squished like a bug. Then you think about the riggers being a bunch of stoned hippies and that doesn't install confidence. LOL!

[sadaist]

This was reported earlier as happening at a rock concert. Turns out it was Radiohead instead.

[FORD]

I don't care for Radiohead at all, but I don't want their fans to die just because they went to a goddamn concert.

I mean, it's not like they're Nickelback or Van Hagar.

[Nitro Express]

I don't care for Radiohead at all, but I don't want their fans to die just because they went to a goddamn concert.

I mean, it's not like they're Nickelback or Van Hagar.

Ha ha. If it was a Sammy Hagar show you would be out there with a cutting torch cutting through the scaffolding weakening it so it will fail hoping a big lighting truss will nail the dork and really turn him into the red rocker by making him spray blood all over from his severed femoral artery.

[ELVIS]

Cool...

Spam could be featured on that 101 ways to die show or whatever it's called...


:biggrin:


Sent from my iPhone, bitches!

[Hardrock69]

:lmao:

This shit is fucked up. It is lawsuit time! There is no fucking excuse for this shit happening.

Look at the U2 360 tour with the giant fucking structure they had called "The Claw".

You ever hear of that shit collapsing?

No. And they had THREE of the motherfuckers!

It was because they used competent engineering design firms, and had strict engineering specs that had to be followed.

I can understand shit collapsing somewhat due to freak 100 mph wind gusts or something like that, as the outdoor stages are set up simply to be a static structure, not taking into account radical weather events. But collapsing for no valid reason other than poor materials, poor engineering, poor construction? No. I say that even Radiohead ought to sue the fuck out of whoever was setting the shit up. It could have been Radiohead onstage at the time.....with a LARGE crowd of people. Could have been MANY people killed....not just one.

[FORD]

And people thought the "Brown M&Ms" thing was just some dumb rock star ego thing. Dave knew what he was doing putting shit like that into the paperwork.

Putting the wrong color of chocolate candy in a bowl wouldn't kill anybody of course. But if you miss the details there, where else could you miss other details that might be far more important.

Though I suspect cheap Chinese construction materials or cheap non union labor probably had something to do with these continuing events as well.

[Nitro Express]

I know a guy who's making a fortune making custom fasteners for aircraft. The reason his business is booming is because we are allowing fasteners to be imported that don't meet the specs indicated on the bolt head. So someone buys some Chinese bolts to spec and they fail. The results can be fatal. We are living in the wild west again. We have all these regulatory agencies but they aren't doing their job. They look the other way when a politically connected firm is selling this shit.

It's all about being politically connected now and you can just run off with billions of dollars of stolen money and nothing will happen to you.

[Seshmeister]

[Hardrock69]

And the new trade agreements the Obama administration are trying to put into effect do not hold foreign companies accountable either.

Look, I could understand moving towards "globalism" if every other country we do business with is a) Trustworthy and b) their products were easily as good as ours.

Say that China was actually named Germany, or Japan, and had the engineering to match. OR.....say if Germany or Japan dropped their prices so much all our companies bought from them because the items were PRODUCED in Germany or Japan and had the engineering to match.

But NOOoooOOoOOooOoooo......

Fucking idiot North American businesses have to try to save a buck.....without regards to quality.


Here is an example of something relevant.

Back in the early 80s, Ford was having serious quality control problems. Fuck it. I say "PROBLEMS" because THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE! I don't use some stupid euphemism like "issues".

So their R & D department got ahold of some engineering drawings from Toyota for one of their cars.

They examined the rear end of the car (rear axle, differentials, wheels, etc.) and measured the fuck out of them, comparing the measurements to the production drawings.

One thing about Japanese manufacturing: Whereas in Western manufacturing drawings, they allow tolerances of say +/- .002-.004" or whatever, the Japanese have ONE tolerance.

ZERO.

ZERO TOLERANCE.

All parts for their products that do not meet the EXACT dimensions of the engineering specs are REJECTED.

That is why Japanese cars a) last forever, b) hold their value and c) are built to last to begin with......

Because the Japanese do not allow any margin for error!

So anyway Ford realized then what they were up against.

When I worked for Raytheon building business jets back in the 90s, Raytheon had a contract for a dozen jets for the JDA (Japanese Defense Agency - now the Japanese Ministry Of Defense).

Naturally it was a bitch to produce them due to the original drawings being in Japanese. But what really made it fucked was that the tolerances were so strict. Raytheon had to create a production schedule that allowed a lot of extra time, due to the inability of the company to knock out parts and assemblies as fast as usual because they had to comply with the stricter tolerances.

Within the past 10 years, being in the commercial building industry, I have seen some architectural firms that were a fucking joke! I would get architectural blueprints for hospitals, schools, government buildings from this company (a nationwide architectural firm), and I would find so many errors it would be unreal. And I do NOT have a degree in architecture or engineering!

In Japan it is a matter of HONOR. They take pride in being the best at what they do. A pride that is sorely lacking in many other countries due to lack of education, lack of infrastructure, lack of corporate accountability, or SHEER LAZINESS.

There is no excuse for that.

I bet there are a lot of Type A perfectionists that wish they could live in Japan. Then again, a lot of them probably take great pride in trashing the incompetence of the idiots on this side of the world, and could not do that so much in Japan, lol.

Cato could probably add a thing or 2 about all this.

Seriously, the worst thing a drum tech should have to worry about is a snare drum head breaking in the midst of a performance or something like that.

They should not have to worry about the goddam stage caving in and killing them. :mad:

One other story that is relevant. I worked for the largest commercial aircraft company in the world for awhile.

They shall rename nameless, but everyone here has flown on them.

They hired a quality improvement consultant to come in to one of their areas to try to increase efficiency and quality.

The contract the guy had was for like 6 million dollars. The contract called for him to stick around for something like 8 months, and work with the department heads, general supervision, and management to improve the processes for that division. He was given carte blanche to make the changes he saw that were necessary. No, he was no Japanese, but his work involved a lot of the ethics found in Japanese manufacturing.

Some of it was simple stuff. For example, a worker currently has to walk 80 feet away from his work area to get a part out of a bin. Make it to where the parts are closer, or brought TO the person, to reduce time wasted by walking an extra minute or two.

I spoke with the guy occasionally. He was not a happy camper. The idiot stupidvisors were not happy campers. Management were not happy campers.

Why?

Because the management at the company from the front line stupidvisors on up were SO RESISTANT to his suggestions, seeing them as a waste of time, or coming up with a LOT of other foolish and ridiculous reasons for not wanting to follow his suggestions, that finally after only 4 months or so, he left!

He was there for only half the time his contract called for him to be there, yet the terms of the contract stated that even if he could not succeed at doing his job due to "things beyond his control", they had to pay him in FULL.

He gave up.

The company went back to doing things the way they always had. Gave the dude 6 million bucks.

The people on the assembly line were somewhat relieved. A lot of them used the excuse "We have been doing it this way for years. Why should we change?". Some of the people who thought that way were in upper management.

The American manufacturing culture is ridiculous. Not as cheap or lacking in quality as China. But nowhere near the quality of products made in Japan.
And nowhere near able to create a culture of pride and honor that will create a workforce that CAN build such quality into products as Japan can.

Ok. Been typing enough about this crap. ;)