Saturday, March 16, 2013

LED Screen Falls Injuring Three at Miami Ultra Music Festival

Thursday, March 14, 2013 - Workers setting-up modular LED display screens for the annual Miami Ultra Music Festival were trapped under screen components that fell about 30 feet (10m) from the overhead trusses.  Fortunately, Fire and Rescue teams were on the festival site preparing for the two-weekend event that runs over Spring Break.  They were able to respond immediately and free the trapped workers.  The workers were transported to local hospitals where two were checked and found to have only minor injuries, and one worker remains hospitalized with two broken legs.  The incident occurred just prior to 8:00 PM the night before the festival opens.

The City of Miami had originally passed on requiring special engineering reviews for the festival stages, but the morning after the incident, they rescinded that ruling and city engineers, building inspectors, the Miami Fire Marshal, and OSHA reviewed all six stages to ensure that they were safe.  The event opened on-schedule and over 330,000 people are anticipated to attend.  Reports coming-in the first evening of the festival indicated that more than 15 patrons were transported for medical reasons due to a variety of causes.

A video from a Miami TV station is here: http://miami.cbslocal.com/latest-videos?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=8633167

Hopefully, the recently developed Event Safety Guide organized by the Event Safety Alliance will reduce the number of worker and patron injuries over the years to come.  This assumes, of course, that cities and states chose to adopt this as a best practices manual.

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