It seems that stage collapses have become an all too common occurrence at music concerts in recent times.
We’ve seen tragic accidents at a Radiohead show in Toronto earlier this year, when several of their road crew were injured and their drum tech killed after the roof of an outdoor stage collapsed during sound check, the second major stage collapse for Canada, after a crisis at the Ottawa Blues Festival last May, where a stage crumbled just 20 minutes into a performance by Cheap Trick.
Stage collapses have also been tragically common in the US, with five people killed last year at the Indiana Music Festival, and a Flaming Lips homecoming show seeing screens and equipment crashing down. Just last month saw one concert-goer killed and 19 injured at a Linkin Park show in Cape Town after temporary scaffolding was brought down in strong winds.
Now a group of Australian entertainment industry leaders have combined to prevent similarly tragic events from occurring in our country.
The Event Safety Alliance Australia has been formed in order to address the “immediate need for universal safety standards for the production of live events,” and was born out of concern about the increasing number of stage accidents around the world in recent years; and has been given permission to adapt prior conditions outlined from UK’s Event Safety Guide.
The Even Safety Alliance Australia are adapting ‘The Purple Guide’ and the ‘Temporary Demountable Structures’ guide “in collaboration with European partners,” to created a singular guide containing a “a universal set of best practices for the industry.”“A group of entertainment industry leaders gathered to address the immediate need for universal safety standards for the production of live events.” –
ESAA Mission Statement
The Alliance also seeks to educate and enforce prevention with the new Event Safety Guide, providing both a series of reports on mishaps and ill-conceived productions from tours around the world, as providing a series of seminars around the country explaining how to implement the guidelines.
The group was inspired by the success of the Event Safety Alliance in the US, which saw a group of event safety representatives come together to combat the recurring series of incidents, following what was a lack of guidelines and regulations in both American and Canada, meaning that the responsibility was falling to the artist and its promoters to ensure their performance site is safe.
An issue that came to the forefront following the collapse at the Radiohead show, with concert promoter Live Nation along with four contracted companies having to comply with an investigation, all in some part involved with the production’s construction, leading to a general lack of accountability.
The investigation stated that it was difficult to actually pinpoint all the companies and parties responsible in operating at the site, a problem typical of large-scale concert shows, with many separate co-ordinators involved in pulling the show together, without a strict series of communicated guidelines.
Spokesman for the Ministry Of Labour, Matt Blajer, stated that “we’re still trying to figure out who owns what, who’s responsible for what”.
The Event Safety Alliance Australia aims to prevent such sticky difficulties occurring down under, including in its mission to “promote cooperation and mutual assistance between persons and organisations associated with public event safety”, as well as “to develop and promote the Australian event industry Code Of Practice across all States and Territories”.
Hopefully the Alliance is the first important step in preventing on of these tragedies from occurring in Australia, and they are encouraging people to become involved via various membership options.
