By now, I am sure all of you have heard about the PINK accident. I would like to take a few moments to talk about this. Lets start by looking at the video:
So was this a rigging failure, or an operator failure?
Lets start by looking at 0:42. You see her left hand goes up, and then at about 0:46 her left hand goes down This motion looks like it was the “GO” cue. A split second later, at 0:47 you see PINK look to the right and puts up her right hand, seemingly to say hold, followed by common crossed arms “E-STOP” sign. Moments later, Pink is moving, and at 0:51 the motion has stopped. You can see two people pulling two of the flying lines back towards the stage after her fall.
To my eye, this looks like Pink signaled a GO before she was properly clipped in, and then tried to abort. I would say she is very lucky that she wasn’t hurt a lot more seriously.
This view would seem to be supported by PINK’s tweet: “To all my nurnberg fans… I am embarrassed and very sorry. I’m in ambulance now but I will b fine. Didn’t get clipped in2 harness correctly, drug me off stage, fell in2 barricade. Getting x rays. I hope it at least looked cool!!!”
As a rigger, this didn’t look cool at all. I am glad PINK is OK, but let this be a lesson to all of us: Don’t give a “GO” signal until you really are ready to go!