Sort of off topic since it's not an issue for home repair, but sort of on topic since it has to do with construction.
I'm sure you've seen the collapse on tv, and its all over the internet especially on youtube.
From looking at that stage, it looked way too tall, and much too top heavy. I dont understand why they make them so tall to begin with, then they hang tons of lighting and huge heavy speakers from them. It would be like building a house by making the walls by using a few 2x4s in the four corners, then building a huge and very heavy roof on top. Then add a few tons of equipment on top of that.
To me, that whole stage looks like it was build wrong. Those tall scaffolding towers look flimsy compared to the weight on top.
Does it look this way to you too?
Aside from what appears to be a poorly built structure, I have to question why two musicians need all of that staging. What ever happened to simply enjoying the music. Granted for an audience of
12,000, they need some amplification, and of course some lights are needed, but if you download a video and play it in slow mode, you can see that the entire "ceiling" was covered with lighting, and there were huge speakers hung from the scaffolding.It seems to me that the amount of equipment used to put on a musical act these days is rediculous. All they really needed was a 12x20 foot stage with a simple tarp over it, and speakers stacked on the platform, with two light towers. I go to lots of shows at county fairs and that is all they have. Yet the shows are fun. Not only are these huges stages dangerous, but we could see these shows for much less money if they cut out all that huge staging.
It's a real shame that people had to die because of our "bigger is better" attitude which seems to be the case with all musical types these days.
Another thing is the sound equipment. I went to a local event and saw a very good local band. They had so much electronics I could not understand the point. Four 14 channel mixer boards for a four member band..... They had 3 computers connected to all of this, and over 40 speakers. This was for a crowd of about 1000 people. I thought the sound quality was bad, muddy, and much too loud. Two weeks later I saw this same band again. This time they had an average sound system with one mixer board, and a few speakers. They sounded 100 times better.
We live in a world of bloat, and particularly when it comes to electronics. Now we pay the price.
While the deaths are bad enough, it could have been much worse if all that electrical equipment had shorted out and electrocuted everyone touching that scaffolding.