Wind – A Lesson From Sandstone Point

TECH TOOLS Wind – A Lesson From Sandstone Point By Simon Byrne. Last month the Red Hot Summer Tour was slammed by an unexpected and severe storm at Queensland’s Sandstone Point. According to weather reports, the wind gusts in the area reached 110 km/h. To the production team’s credit (Powa Productions and Regional Touring), the…

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Where has the Safety gone?

Guest Blog, by Roderick van Gelder In July 2012 I proudly announced the incorporation of Event Safety Alliance Australia at the Entech ‘Safety Seminar’ in Melbourne.  In July this year I had to announce at the Entech ‘Safety Seminar’ that the Event Safety Alliance Australia was no more. After two years of hard work by…

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What Woodie Wanted

Talking about male cancer issues is REALLY freaking boring. I know, I track what you click. If I write about a punk who runs a crap festival and rips off crew, you click 28 x more than if it is about men stuff. Especially THIS man stuff, cancer of the gland that helps you ejaculate.…

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Darwin Safety: the plot thickens

Our Blog on Safety, Darwin Style last week attracted a lot of comments, here. Now this additional image has come to hand, showing a remarkable disregard for basic safety with a crew member or observer standing without a hard hat and wearing what appear to be thongs. This is allegedly the load in of the…

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Desperate Safety Darwin style

Why on EARTH would a production firm stage this performance in front of 3,000 people in DARWIN this weekend? The event was the DSO playing on an ship anchored about 30m out from the wharf. Does Darwin exclude itself from sensible safety, let alone legal responsibility? Do you know more? Email juliusmedia@me.com

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The Fire Next Time

Wired magazine is on our best 5 list here at CX, and a recent article by Ben Paynter resonated. He points out that when the space shuttle Challenger burned up on reentry, the problem had been known for 79 previous missions. But it had not come together and created a disaster, so the rocket nerds…

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Safety Summit endorses Code or Guidelines

The National Safety Summit at ENTECH attracted a truly representative cross section of the entertainment and events industry on Thursday 19th July. It was standing room only at Melbourne Park, as the industry heard how a Code or Guidelines could be put together, and discussed wider safety and training issues. The Summit endorsed by a…

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Radiohead Roof Failure: More Info

As with the Indiana disaster last August, there is absolutely nothing official being said by anyone, at the ernest advice of lawyers, who would always sanction silence. It is our policy to run an intelligent and unbiased debate on ANYTHING that affects our industry, so here goes…. First up, here is a BEFORE photo of…

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Radiohead Disaster – site report

CX pic, above. Witnesses say a cracking noise like pyro preceded the collapse, which they estimated took 5 seconds. The stage failed just prior to sound-check, at 4pm. Thousands of fans were outside the gates. The band were in the prep room. UPDATED: CX visited Downsview Park in Toronto on Saturday June 16th and saw…

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Industry Safety Summit at ENTECH Melbourne July 19th 2pm

Live Performance Australia, CX and ETF, owners of ENTECH have called a National Summit to discuss safety issues relating to theatre and live events. This essential, bipartisan and free-to-attend meeting will bring together the live performance and events industry stakeholders, including venues, production suppliers, associations and service providers to discuss and ratify an agreeable pathway…

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Safety is now cool

We were shellacked relentlessly in previous years whenever CX wrote of stage safety and associated dark arts. So the risky passing of a 12 page forensic report on the Indiana disaster of August 2011 in the May CX mag was eagerly monitored by the Facebook and CX Mail Monitor. Amazingly we received only direct praise…

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