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Is the quest for high G.E becoming too dangerous


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1 hour ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

In 2017,  Bluecoats had an 8’ high prop known as the Jagged Line. When it was delivered at Spring Training, it had no rails up top. The admin and board overruled the design team and had safety rails installed within a week. Good corps have checks and balances. 

That thing still scared the bejeezus out of me. Shook everytime during the opening hit. The chairs seemed a lot more stable (as chairs tend to be haha).

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1 hour ago, Brass Lover said:

That thing still scared the bejeezus out of me. Shook everytime during the opening hit. The chairs seemed a lot more stable (as chairs tend to be haha).

If you saw the superstructure underneath, you never would have been scared. It was professionally designed and engineered. 

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1 hour ago, Brass Lover said:

That thing still scared the bejeezus out of me. Shook everytime during the opening hit. The chairs seemed a lot more stable (as chairs tend to be haha).

Sometimes the trick is to have something appear to be more dangerous than it actually is. Sometimes, the safety is carefully built in so it's not that evident. :wink:

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11 hours ago, Weaklefthand4ever said:

Great post and a good comparison overall. I feel like DCI is starting to address some of the more dangerous issues such as field judges and most corps have people on staff with some sort of medical training. Some people have said "Back in my day we sucked it up and dealt with it!!" My response has always been "Back in your day and in MY day we weren't doing anything CLOSE to what these MM's are doing now." 

I'm happy that DCI and member corps are taking safety more seriously on all fronts. None of us want to see MM's and staff or volunteers get hurt.

field judges is just a small part of the potential safety concerns out there. the quest for more and bigger and higher props is IMO the bigger issue. 

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4 hours ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

In 2017,  Bluecoats had an 8’ high prop known as the Jagged Line. When it was delivered at Spring Training, it had no rails up top. The admin and board overruled the design team and had safety rails installed within a week. Good corps have checks and balances. 

technically i believe the rules for pretty much every circuit is 5 or 6 feet high require handrails for liability issues

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1 hour ago, Jeff Ream said:

field judges is just a small part of the potential safety concerns out there. the quest for more and bigger and higher props is IMO the bigger issue. 

It's to the point, and I don't say this negatively at all, but thoughtfully where one needs to really look at the structures and make sure they can handle load factors and stress beyond what they think will be applied on them by a factor of 2 or 3. That way, they won't have some kind of insane failure.

 

I guess a cautionary tale might be found with the Texas A and M Bonfire collapse. No one wants this to happen in our activity in some way, shape or form, admins, Staff, members... no one wants anyone injured no matter how slightly or worse due to a bad structural design with any prop:

 

reference to those who are unfamiliar...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Aggie_Bonfire_collapse

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1 hour ago, Jeff Ream said:

technically i believe the rules for pretty much every circuit is 5 or 6 feet high require handrails for liability issues

Makes sense, though with some of the less agile stumblebums one finds in some groups... I might have them on something 2 feet off the ground... and I'm serious. I'm curious what the OSHA regs are for that type of thing, actually. 

I worked on the Safety Committee for where I've worked, and this kind of stuff hits home to me. Also been injured myself at work due to various issues here and there. A lot of things to think about with any structure, stair, platform and ways to walk and approach them...

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7 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

field judges is just a small part of the potential safety concerns out there. the quest for more and bigger and higher props is IMO the bigger issue. 

Yes..the verticality factor is the one area that concerns me..I'd hate to see a fail because of poorly designed props, but even more problematic is a slipping off of said prop by a mm due to atmospheric conditions

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5 hours ago, BigW said:

Makes sense, though with some of the less agile stumblebums one finds in some groups... I might have them on something 2 feet off the ground... and I'm serious. I'm curious what the OSHA regs are for that type of thing, actually. 

I worked on the Safety Committee for where I've worked, and this kind of stuff hits home to me. Also been injured myself at work due to various issues here and there. A lot of things to think about with any structure, stair, platform and ways to walk and approach them...

I get it trust me. I've done everything from NDT work to teaching and have seem some things (scaffolders inside power plant boilers are truly insane.) I pretty much hurt myself in some way literally every time I build a pool cue and my shop is pretty #### controlled. That's why NO ONE comes into my shop when lathes or the CNC is running. I KNOW what's going on and I still always manage find a way to lose focus for a split second. I'm one of those sumblebums that BigW so eloquently described.

With all of the Go-Cam footage out there, you can usually get a good look at how everything is structured and most of the props look pretty safe. But as the OP asked in the original topic heading and several posters pointed out, the potential gain for "bigger, higher, faster" GE wise is starting to push the envelope of risk vs. reward. I don't know anyone who marched Bluecoats in 2016, but I would hope there were multiple full corps huddles regarding "Now let's talk about how you get on and off of this #### ramp thing without killing yourselves." One thing I didn't notice about the ramps were either ladders or stairs but I well may have missed them. 

The tarps are another thing that's been discussed but need to really be evaluated (and may already be.) I know I wasn't too hip on the ones Cavies used in '18. They just made me think of what would happen if a foot gets caught or something of that nature. 

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