It was a weekend that went from the ridiculous to the tragic. On Friday, July 23, the Kings of Leon stopped their concert mid-show after being bombarded by pigeon droppings from the rafters of the Verizon Center in St. Louis. The remainder of the concert was cancelled, though fans were not informed as to the reason at the time, resulting in bottle tossing and other moderate crowd turbulence. The following day, 19 concertgoers were killed as a result of a stampede in an entrance tunnel to the Love Parade festival in Duisburg, Germany. There, communications between authorities and attendees was far worse, with the Associated Press reporting that rescue workers' bullhorns had to compete with the music that continued to emanate from the stage.
"Something Had Gone Wrong"
The BBC reported that a British DJ booked to perform at the event, "was shocked when he was told to continue with his set on the main stage – even though it was clear something had gone wrong."
Shocked also was Ron Coté, principal life safety engineer at the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the organization that drafts and provides guidance codes that have been widely adopted by most state regulator agencies. "When I heard about what happened in Germany I was very surprised. That's just not supposed to happen anymore," he says.
But it does, human behavior being what it is. And that's part of what the relevant codes – NFPA 101 and NFPA 72 – are designed in part to help anticipate. The deadly Station nightclub fire in February 2003 in West Warwick, R.I. was the last such tragedy in the U.S., and it led to significant changes in the NFPA's life safety code, including mandating sprinklers in existing venues and increasing the size of the main exit to accommodate at least two-thirds of the maximum assembled capacity of a venue.
(Editor's note: NFPA's amendments to NFPA 101, Life Safety Code and NFPA 5000, Building Construction and Safety Code took effect in 2003. Along with main entrance egress width, sprinklers and festival seating, the codes now require the presence of a trained crowd manager for every 250 people in all assembly occupancies. For information on crowd manager training programs, visit www.firemarshal.state.md.us/crowdmanager, www.fire-marshal.ri.gov/news.php or www.iaam.org.)
Sound, Lights, Video in Life Safety
Coté says tragedies such as these are carefully investigated to see what changes to the codes can be made to help avoid future disasters. He says that they'll look into the Love Parade catastrophe, as well, though it will take longer than it would if for a domestic incident, as they develop liaisons with the appropriate German agencies. The facts are still coming together, but reports seem to indicate that the festival, which has gown bigger every year, was turning away some patrons even as they were letting new concertgoers in. Foot traffic in both directions was being funneled through an unused railway tunnel. "That's something that the codes would have provided for," says Coté. "It would have anticipated a scenario about turning people away." The annex in NFPA 101 lists about 100 scenarios, such as whether a venue or event expects alcohol or drug use, or if festival seating is going to be used.
The codes also provide for how sound, lighting and video systems interact with life safety in venues with a capacity of over 300 persons. However, those codes have to cover such a wide array of venues that not all technologies might be used to their best effect. Sound systems are supposed to be able to overridden by the venue's alarm system, which is supposed to offer both audible and visual signaling as well as the capability for spoken-word instructions, and that feature has certain minimums in terms of both audibility and intelligibility. These requirements are mandated by the NFPA 101 life safety code and their implementation is specified by the NFPA 72 code. But since the codes apply to venues like concert halls and cinemas alike, the role of video projection becomes less clear. The NFPA code mandates that in the event of an emergency, "light projection" systems must be turned off and ambient lighting systems must be turned on. A large projection screen through which an emergency coordinator could give instructions to a crowd during an emergency evacuation might contribute significantly to avoiding panic. However, says Coté, "Using a screen to deliver emergency messaging might be a good idea, but we can't write codes for things like projection screens, since not every venue is going to have them. The codes have to be written in such a way as to be able to be applied to a very broad range of places."
Future Changes
But that could change in the future. Richard Roux, senior electrical engineer at NFPA, says future changes to the code could conceivably incorporate video projection, as long as those systems are fixed elements of the AV system in a venue. A good example would be the jumbo video screens in sports stadiums, rather than itinerant projection systems that travel with a touring act. However, in order to meet the basics of the code into which they could be written, those screens would also have to be UL-rated for emergency notification applications. That's an expensive step that not all manufacturers might be willing to undertake.
What is already changing is the integration of video and messaging boards in large-scale venues. Jack Wrightson, a principal at AV and messaging systems designer WJHW, says it's become a standard practice for them to tie ribbon boards and captioned video displays into both the emergency power system and the emergency notification system at venues. "That's not [specified] in either the NFPA 101 and 72 codes, but it can be done and it makes sense to do," he says.
Every revision and expansion of emergency codes translates into higher costs for venue owners. However, the cost of less stringent codes, or poorly enforced ones, is even higher. The Station fire generated tens of millions of dollars in litigation and numerous personal bankruptcies. To the extent possible, it makes good business sense to meet and even exceed the latest versions of all the codes.
