INDIANAPOLIS — A fifth individual has died following a stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair which injured 45 individuals during a serious thunderstorm on Saturday evening.
At a Sunday morning news conference, Indiana State Police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten verified that four individuals had been pronounced dead soon after the collapse which an additional died early Sunday.
The victims had been identified as Tammy Vandam, 42, of Wanatah; Glenn Goodrich, 49, of Indianapolis; Alina Bigjohny, 23, of Fort Wayne; Christina Santiago, 29, of Chicago; and Nathan Byrd, 51, of Indianapolis, who died early Sunday at Methodist Hospital.
The leader of the neighborhood stage hands union confirmed that Byrd was among the spot light operators that had been up in the rigging when the stage collapsed.
Bursten mentioned the injuries to some other victims are so serious that the death toll could rise. He didn’t understand how many of the victims had been fans and how many were crew members.
- The stage collapses during the Indiana State Fair concert.
The collapse occurred about 8:50 p.m. as Sugarland, a country music act, was preparing to perform on the fair’s main stage.
The National Weather Service stated winds approximated at 60 to 70 mph buffeted the stage ahead of a line of severe thunderstorms. A serious thunderstorm warning had been issued for Marion County prior to the collapse.
“What hit really wasn’t a storm. It was a significant gust of wind,” Bursten mentioned.
David Lindquist, a reporter for the Indianapolis Star who had been there to cover the concert, informed 6News that an announcement was made that weather was moving in about two minutes prior to the winds kicked up, but those in front of the stage had little time to get out of the weather, if they needed to do so.
“There is an evacuation plan that is prepared. There were preparations in progress in anticipation of a severe storm arriving around 9:15,” Bursten stated. “Personnel were being put in place for an evacuation if that were deemed necessary.”
Indiana State Fair Executive Director Cindy Hoye stated Sunday that the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration is looking into the contractor responsible for structure, Greenfield-based MidAmerica, and that a company engineer from Tennessee was coming to the collapse scene.
Gov. Mitch Daniels called the collapse a “freakish accident” and praised the response as instantaneous and very professional.
“Individual Hoosiers ran to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds, offering, in many cases, their own professional skills,” he mentioned, choking up. “It’s the character that we associate with our state. People don’t have to do paid to do it.”
An on-site emergency center was set up at the fairgrounds instantly after the collapse. Other individuals at the live concert converged on the collapsed stage in the immediate aftermath, attempting to pull the injured from beneath the mangled debris.
“After the stage fell, it was complete chaos. Everyone had froze,” mentioned Jason Scofield, who was at the concert. “There was hundreds of people trying to lift the front of the stage up.”
Individuals ran to flee the collapse, however they tripped over each other because the stage came down, an additional witness informed 6News.
“It was very scary, but I’m very fortunate I escaped with minor injuries,” a 14-year-old victim mentioned. “There was people underneath the stage trying to get out. The stage hit me. It was like a scene from a movie. It just happened so fast.”
The Indiana State Fair canceled occasions for Sunday and prepared to reopen on Monday at 8 a.m. having a special ceremony at 9 a.m. remembering those who died and had been hurt. It was not instantly known what will happen with concerts scheduled in the coming days.
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