Desarrollo de la competencia musical: modelos teóricos

Fall protection became one of the entertainment industry’s hot buttons in the mid-1990s. In 1970, the federal government passed a new series of laws administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA has stepped in to make it mandatory to wear safety equipment during rigging and any truss or overhead work. There have been several cases of stagehands falling, even with the new requirements, but, sadly, these stagehands had failed to employ the safety equipment properly or at all. Many falls occur while follow spot operators or crew members are climbing wire rope ladders and they lose their footing. One incident that had a happy ending occurred on the 1995 Billy Joel – Elton John tour. A stagehand was climbing a wire rope ladder to a follow spot position and missed a rung near the top. He was wearing a full body harness, and when he fell the retractable lifeline stopped him from fall-ing all the way to the ground. He was able to regain his footing and complete the climb. The gear that saved him is referred to as fall protection equipment.

In a broad sense, the concept of fall protection refers to all of the effort involved in making sure workers are protected from accidental falls and, if a fall occurs, having a system in place to save the worker’s life. All the rules for this are contained in the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act. The

Act created the 6-foot rule ; where there are no other restraints (such as a railing), anyone working more than 6 feet off the fl oor must wear a harness, not just when climbing on a truss or high steel.

Laws require employers to protect every employee from injury in the normal course of work. A spe-cifi c law regarding this is CFR 1910.132 (Personal Protective Equipment). Fall hazard is a term used in the law to describe any situation where a worker could lose his balance, fall to a lower level, and be injured. OSHA uses the 6-foot rule to defi ne fall haz-ard situations. If a worker is exposed to the possibility of falling 6 feet or more, some restraint such as a rail-ing or other fall protection device must be provided and used. OSHA recognizes three basic methods of fall protection. The fi rst is a guardrail system surrounding the walking or work surface, which is not practical on lighting trusses. The second is a safety net system installed below to catch a falling worker, but safety nets for lighting trusses are also a problem. Third, a personal fall arrest system can be provided to protect a worker in lieu of the foregoing methods ( Figure 9.4 ).

This is not simply a matter of putting on a rock climb-ing harness and attachclimb-ing it to a rope tied around a steel beam in the ceiling. In fact, recreational climbing gear does not meet OSHA standards. The components that are used in these systems are very different from those a rock climber uses, and most of the rock climb-ing and rescue equipment used by riggers and fi remen is not legal for fall protection. One obvious piece of gear is the seat harness , which is a full body harness that has an attachment point above the shoulders so the person falling cannot become inverted and fall out of the rig, as has happened to climbers. This is why OSHA has stated that the system must be designed as a total system . The agency does not leave it up to rig-gers to put their own systems together. OSHA’s con-cern is that it is very easy to mismatch components, which weakens the standards. OSHA says the system must meet the following conditions:

1. Be c ontinuous.

2. Be e xclusive.

3. Reduce the arrest forces communicated to the fallen worker to safe levels.

4. Limit the free-fall distance before the arrest.

5. Be composed of components of safe design.

6. Be engineered as a total system.

7. Incorporate rescue after the fall is arrested.

8. Incorporate formal training in system use.

What does all this mean? Continuous simply means that workers may not disconnect themselves from the system once they are exposed to a potential fall of more than 6 feet. Note that this is how the rig-ger mentioned earlier fell. The system must allow the worker to move vertically and, when necessary, hori-zontally ( Figure 9.5 ). In the old days, riggers would climb to the building steel or truss and attach ropes to their climbing harnesses. That is not allowed today. The system must be exclusive and not part of the anchoring of other rigging, such as a truss or sound system. The really important feature is that, if a worker falls, the system must have an energy absorption system built in so a worker who falls is not jerked to a stop at the end of the rope which could possibly cause internal damage ( Figure 9.6 ).

There are limits to the distance a worker can fall before the system begins to break the fall. That distance is 6 feet or the distance to a lower surface, whichever is less. It doesn’t mean the worker falls only 6 feet; it means that the worker can fall 6 feet before the absorption system begins to arrest the fall.

A rescue plan must be in place and practiced.

When an accident happens, how is the victim to be rescued? The employer must have a written plan

and personnel trained and ready to react quickly to implement that plan. Training before use of the equipment must cover specifi cs of the system components and assessment of the hazards to which the worker will be exposed during the production.

Additional workers must be trained in rescue tech-niques for the eventuality that someone does fall.

The lighting designer needs to be aware of the safety of the crew while rigging and climbing on trusses to focus and operate follow spots, because these systems must be built into the truss plan to meet OSHA standards. Heavy fi nes can be imposed when riggers for theatrical events are found not to be wearing safety devices. It should also be noted that the rigger certifi cation exam sponsored by ESTA has made a point of reinforcing the importance of this safety standard.

I have always had a deep respect for riggers for their skill and daring. I know they put their lives on the line each time they go high into a building’s structural steel. I never thought there was much that could be done to protect them if they did fall, except scrape them up. Cold, perhaps, but realistic. Now, because of the push by both OSHA and, even more importantly, the riggers themselves, something has been done to improve their odds. ESTA certifi cation of arena and theatre riggers has focused more atten-tion on the skills necessary to do this job correctly, safely, and effi ciently. But, there are still riggers who

FIGURE 9 .4 Fall pr otection, f ull body har ness. ( Drawing by Steve Nelson.)

FIGURE 9 .6 Fall protection, horizontal lifeline rig. (Drawing by Steve Nelson.)

do not follow all the rules, and in 2008 one fell from the high steel, apparently because he did not hook up before unhooking . How can these tragic accidents be totally eliminated? More education is probably the only answer.

Frankly , there is another group of workers who are not skilled riggers but also need to take advantage of fall protection. For many years, truss-mounted follow spots have been used in arena shows. The stagehands respon-sible for operating them are not necessarily trained, profi cient climbers, and many have a justifi able con-cern about climbing a 20-foot wire ladder up to the truss to maneuver into the follow spot chair (see Chapter 13). In addition, local stagehands who do the light focus are required to not only move along the truss but also to lean over to focus and put color media in lights from a very uncomfortable position. It is hot, sweaty, exhausting work. This group also deserves to be made safe, and a number of concert rigging suppli-ers have pioneered safety equipment for them.