It’s an inauspicious start to a touring season that’s already forecast to experience more violent weather that’s likely to affect touring operations, regardless of your personal views on global warming.
Who Pulls the Plug?
David Milly, president of Theatrical Lighting Systems (TLS) in Huntsville, AL, is intimately familiar with the havoc that weather can play: tornadoes hit his region on April 27, 2011, killing 40 and flattening buildings just 10 miles from his office. And his lighting gear was on that stage at the Indiana State Fair last year, contracted by the opening act for headliner Sugarland.
Both events have sharpened Milly’s perspective on how weather affects how we make a living. The LED equipment that TLS had on the Indiana Fair stage last year wasn’t damaged by the actual storm of the falling roof — in fact, it was already in the process of being loaded out after the opening act’s set was done — but TLS did sustain a bit of a financial hit later when OSHA and other investigating agencies froze the stage area as a possible crime scene, exposing all the equipment to the elements, in some cases for the better part of a week, damaging some of TLS’ PC cards and other items. Milly says that his crew had to take a specialized OSHA training course before the agency would let them finish loading and removing the gear from the stage area six days later.
But the loss of some equipment pales in comparison to the hurt that people can sustain. When he owned a Tomcat four-poster stage years ago, Milly says he would stipulate in his rental contracts that he would take it down if wind speeds reached numbers well below the 70 m.p.h. that the manufacturer had rated it for. This year, he says he intends to word contracts in such a way as to give his crews more leverage in assessing the potential for wind and other weather problems and acting on it.
“If the weather looks like it’s going to become a problem, I want my folks to have input as to whether or not the show goes on,” he says.
Abundant Caution
Erring on the side of caution is going to be a theme this season, particularly in light of the numerous lawsuits filed around the Indiana State Fair disaster. But even those who escape direct weather problems may still pay a price. At the very least, says Scott Carroll, executive vice president & program director of Take 1, an insurer for the entertainment industry, terms will become more restrictive: higher deductibles may be required; engineering sign-offs may need to be submitted to the carrier as part of the trigger for when coverage applies; and written processes and procedures may need to be provided to the carriers regarding who is responsible for calling the show or lowering the roof truss structures when high winds or bad weather are forecast.
“[Insurance] carriers will be looking for more proactive approaches to potential and sudden changes in the weather rather than an after-the-fact approach, as was seen in so many of the stage accidents in the past,” Carroll warns.
The maelstrom of litigation will make everyone involved in outdoor concert events think twice and even three times about every decision they make when it comes to weather. They will have to start thinking more like Everett Lybolt, general manager of Sound Image in Nashville.
Lybolt, an instrument-rated private pilot, thinks about weather constantly, both as a flier and as someone whose gear is on open stages across the country all summer long.
“All I can say is, let weather be your guide,” he says. “If you’re not seeing ‘severe clear,’ then you need to be thinking about what happens if this or that happens.”
Not a Simple Call
But Lybolt also understands that when you’re standing backstage with an entire band and its crew minutes away from taking the stage in front of 20,000 people who have been baking in the sun all day waiting for this moment, it’s not a simple call. “It ultimately comes down to who pays the bills,” he concedes. “I can’t micromanage every decision; it could cost me the relationship with the band and the band’s manager. What you can do is make an informed decision based on as much information as possible.”
And there are a lot of resources available. Websites like livewxradar.com offer real-time moving Doppler radar images that can drill down to a matter of meters to show where storms are and in which directions and how quickly they’re moving. One thing I’d strongly recommend doing is not only consulting those sites but also taking screen shots of them, as well.
The Live Weather Radar site is time-stamped in both ET and GMT and can provide a record not only of the weather at a particular moment in time but also of the fact that you consulted it, because given the amounts of money involved — Sugarland’s contract, widely reported after the lawsuit was announced, called for them to earn $300,500 for their set that day in Indiana — even a decision not to go on can lead to litigation.
Closer Scrutiny
Also expect to see closer scrutiny of live outdoor events this season by local and federal regulatory agencies, who will be looking for reasons to issue defensive summons and fines, to blunt the criticism they took from previous disasters. “They have to be out in force — the public has become much more sensitive to this issue now,” Ralph Mastrangelo, Clair’s senior director of touring told me.
It’s going to be a long summer, with much of it spent looking over the shoulder at both the weather and OSHA.
