Heavy storm kills five people at Pukkelpop festival (Belgium

[Artemis]

I just read about this festival in Belgium that got hit by a sudden storm that's killed 5 people so far. I think this the 3rd or 4th music festival in recent weeks where the stage has collapsed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14586001

[Mescal]

Obviously it's all over the news here.

The second biggest festival in Belgium turned into a war zone after ten (10!) minutes of heavy rain and wind. 2 tents collapsed, trees fell over, ....

I've been to the festival many times (even saw Jane's addiction there) but luckily I didn't go this year.

Friends of mine went and they said it was horrible, people being hurt all around them, two of them were inside the tent moments before it collapsed, one was almost hit by a tree, there was no where to run. The tents weren't safe because of the storm and outside hailstones were coming down really hard, so hard that they left bruises. Friend saw a person trapped under a scaffold, and they weren't able to release him .... Total mayham.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW66ZNd-N1k

Here you see the tent collapsing + people running; scary shit.

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/m ... /1.1090519

[Mescal]

also, it was 6 in the afternoon, look at how dark it is! It seems like the middle of the night.

It happened during the first day of the festival. The rest of the festival was canceled

[Mescal]

Some more vids here:

http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail ... 110819_037

Don't know if you guys are interested, but I'm really, really, really sad about this.

[Larry B.]

Shit, dude, that was terrible...

and how fucking crazy is that weather? Is it a normal thing that suddenly the entire sky gets dark-clouded and shit like that happens? Are those winds normal in this time of the year?

I find it "interesting" that everything went dark at 6pm... take a look at this video, this happened one or two weeks ago in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Clouds covered the entire sky at noon, a storm began and big hailstones started falling from the clouds. The video is amazing, you can see how in 2 minutes the city goes from complete darkness to regular day light.



Are there any reports of dead or injured people from the festival?

[Larry B.]

Shit, I guess this answers my question in Mescal's post about this... this sucks

[krakle]

crazy storms indeed. surely good for some horrifying youtube vids... it's pretty insane. one facebook friend said she was lucky with only bruises from the falling hail. I guess she was.

[Mescal]

No, not normal at all! My friends said they've never seen anything like that.

5 dead, 10 severely injured of which 3 critical, 140 injured (one guy supposedly got his arm ripped off)

[Larry B.]

goddamn'... just glad your close ones are alright, but this just sucks. going to a music festival and dying...

[Hokahey]

Lollapalooza 2003 I drove to Indianapolis to see the opening show. We're in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn fields, and as QOTSA is finishing their set a guy comes out and announces to the crowd that there's a tornado warning and everyone on the lawn needs to come under the pavillion. Needless to say, several thousand people are now trampling everyone in the seats where I was. I decided I'd rather take my chances somewhere else. I noticed the bathrooms were a brick structure and went and stood in the opening. As the storm hit merch tents went flying but I dont think anyone got hurt. It was kind of freaky though.

I was also at Busch Stadium seeing a Cardinals game a few years back when a tornado hit. You can Youtube "Bush Stadium tornado" and see the footage. Again, back in the bathrooms, but this time with the rest of the stadium.

Nothing worse than being stuck somewhere outdoors in that kind of situation. Definitely gets the heart racing.

[Larry B.]

what scares me the most about something like that is the possibility of being trampled on.

[Mescal]

what scares me the most about something like that is the possibility of being trampled on.

No one was trampled on. All the injuries came from things falling over, or flying over, ....

[MYXYLPLYX]

Yeah, I'm working with a bunch of production people right now (international stage design company, sound, lights, etc.) on a project and it was very much the topic of discussion. Many of them have worked that festival and had friends/colleagues there who were reporting conditions back to them as it happened.

On the heels of the Indiana incident, people are very concerned that there is going to be a real shake up in the touring industry and some heavy pressure from all directions to change the current way of doing business.

All I know is, as an industry, we've got to do better. One of these incidents is too many.

I was working a festival last year that had a catastrophic stage failure. I was about 300 yards away eating lunch and it sounded like a garbage truck going off a cliff. Fortunately, it was during the build up before the festival opened and no one was seriously hurt. I drove one crew guy to the hospital for a broken ankle (jumping out of the way) and the rest were treated on scene and released.

[creep]

i don't really understand the need for these huge structures. are lights really that important for a show? they could probably scale them way down for outdoor shows.

[krakle]

All I know is, as an industry, we've got to do better

What are you thinking of, exactly?

[MYXYLPLYX]

All I know is, as an industry, we've got to do better

What are you thinking of, exactly?

Well, before governments get involved, greater self-regulation within the industry establishing standards and practices.

To address the immediate problems we need to establish guidelines for extreme weather, particularly in areas KNOWN for extreme weather (I don't know about Pukkelpop, but the American midwest is well known for extreme weather conditions).

I've had to go and buy anemometers (measure windspeed) for festival stage managers to determine whether conditions were safe for the stage rigging. Add to that reporting from weather agencies before and during events to provide an abundance of info for the production team to evaluate safety.

There's no way to eliminate all risk, but I don't think we've minimized it as well as we possibly can.

[krakle]

All I know is, as an industry, we've got to do better

What are you thinking of, exactly?

Well, before governments get involved, greater self-regulation within the industry establishing standards and practices.

To address the immediate problems we need to establish guidelines for extreme weather, particularly in areas KNOWN for extreme weather (I don't know about Pukkelpop, but the American midwest is well known for extreme weather conditions).

I've had to go and buy anemometers (measure windspeed) for festival stage managers to determine whether conditions were safe for the stage rigging. Add to that reporting from weather agencies before and during events to provide an abundance of info for the production team to evaluate safety.

There's no way to eliminate all risk, but I don't think we've minimized it as well as we possibly can.

I thought you maybe had specific situations in mind. As far as I can tell for Pukkelpop, the storm was unusually extreme/extremely unusual ( ). The video footage is insane. I don't think I've ever seen such weather in my 29 and a half years around here. I'm from the north of The Netherlands, the climate is pretty much comparable.

[Pandemonium]

i don't really understand the need for these huge structures. are lights really that important for a show? they could probably scale them way down for outdoor shows.

The structure is also necessary for the speaker PA to be supported and stacked. You can't have speakers at ground level and expect the sound to carry through a typical festival crowd on a flat field. And lights and suspended video screens are needed as most shows go well into the evening. And a stage almost always needs a covering or roof of some sort to block out potential rain and sunlight during the day among other things.

The typical design for a outdoor festival stage and lighting/speaker/roof cover truss assembly is basically built like four toothpicks supporting a playing card. It's an inherently flawed design. Horizontally with no stress, the lights, hanging speakers and video screens (if any) are easily supported. But introduce any lateral movement or pressure from wind or earthquake and it's a recipe for disaster as we've seen several times this Summer. This is why U2's "360" stage design has been considered so revolutionary by many in the concert staging industry because the top load is far more evenly distributed along the four curved legs at each axis and there's little wind resistance due to the design.

You look at the videos from the Pukkelpop festival and see fairly massive lighting rigs hanging (and swinging and falling) from flimsy ceiling rigs inside those festival tents - that was a accident waiting to happen. I remember going to a few Circus De Sole shows hosted in big tents in Santa Monica a decade ago and thinking "this is like a giant top heavy camping tent" and feeling pretty nervous through the show.

Another potential problem which I've always thought as a smoking gun is some arena shows which hang massive lighting trusses directly from the arena ceiling with no ground support. You take that production across North America to dozens of arenas, some which are in dire condition with outdated load specs and eventually a lighting rig will come crashing down on some unfortunate fans in the first few rows.

Granted, these accidents have happened all due to extreme weather and it's unsettling that there have been several significant accidents of this type in just a few month span, but imo, they were all preventable. There definitely needs to be more thought put into stage design going forward.

[MYXYLPLYX]

i don't really understand the need for these huge structures. are lights really that important for a show? they could probably scale them way down for outdoor shows.

The structure is also necessary for the speaker PA to be supported and stacked. You can't have speakers at ground level and expect the sound to carry through a typical festival crowd on a flat field. And lights and suspended video screens are needed as most shows go well into the evening. And a stage almost always needs a covering or roof of some sort to block out potential rain and sunlight during the day among other things.

The typical design for a outdoor festival stage and lighting/speaker/roof cover truss assembly is basically built like four toothpicks supporting a playing card. It's an inherently flawed design. Horizontally with no stress, the lights, hanging speakers and video screens (if any) are easily supported. But introduce any lateral movement or pressure from wind or earthquake and it's a recipe for disaster as we've seen several times this Summer. This is why U2's "360" stage design has been considered so revolutionary by many in the concert staging industry because the top load is far more evenly distributed along the four curved legs at each axis and there's little wind resistance due to the design.

You look at the videos from the Pukkelpop festival and see fairly massive lighting rigs hanging (and swinging and falling) from flimsy ceiling rigs inside those festival tents - that was a accident waiting to happen. I remember going to a few Circus De Sole shows hosted in big tents in Santa Monica a decade ago and thinking "this is like a giant top heavy camping tent" and feeling pretty nervous through the show.

Another potential problem which I've always thought as a smoking gun is some arena shows which hang massive lighting trusses directly from the arena ceiling with no ground support. You take that production across North America to dozens of arenas, some which are in dire condition with outdated load specs and eventually a lighting rig will come crashing down on some unfortunate fans in the first few rows.

Granted, these accidents have happened all due to extreme weather and it's unsettling that there have been several significant accidents of this type in just a few month span, but imo, they were all preventable. There definitely needs to be more thought put into stage design going forward.

Yeah, most PA's are hung from truss while subs are stacked at ground level. No festival stage I've seen had bracing for shear force, the Kleege pop up trailer stages offer somewhat more support, but as you can see in my pic above, are susceptible to hydraulic failure.

I have no doubt these stages can be engineered better, but how cost prohibitive will it be? Also, the need for these stages to be able to be erected and struck in short order and and shipped long distances poses its own set of problems...

As for the arena thing, that concern is very relevant to the gig I'm on right now, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit concerned.

[Pandemonium]

As for the arena thing, that concern is very relevant to the gig I'm on right now, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit concerned.

In '84, at one of Bruce Springsteen's arena shows I caught early on his Born In The USA tour at the LA Sports Arena, a pair of large, garbage can-sized lights suspended from a ceiling rig that extended over the first few rows up front broke free during the show's half time break and smashed down onto a group of seats in the front row. By sheer luck, the seats where the lights hit were vacant but a couple in a pair of seats next to them were injured and had to be taken by stretcher to a hospital.

[krakle]

Curtis Mayfield

but all of these incidents might have different causes, I don't know.

my worst fear, though, is getting hit by a huge disco ball.

[Hokahey]

This is Busch Stadium tornado. Check out the lady get nailed by the trash can.

The scary part was having no idea a storm was coming, and then looking out over left field and seeing a giant wall of debris coming at us from the then recently demolished old Bush Stadium next door. It looked like a scene from 9/11, and because there was no thunder or anything we didn't know what had happened at first. I thought a building had collapsed. It was extremely surreal.