Indiana State Fair Disaster Exposes Regulatory Gaps

The weekend tragedy that took five lives, and hurt at least 40 other people, at the Indiana State Fair is exposing gaps in safety oversight and highlighting the hazards of outdoors shows.
The regulatory void in Indiana begins with a lack of supervision of the companies that construct temporary outdoor stages such as the one that collapsed Saturday amid high winds — the firms aren’t required to get state building permits. As a result, they don’t have to submit engineering plans or undergo any kind of inspection, according to a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
“There is no permitting process,” the department spokesman told The Indianapolis Star. “There is no regulation on it.”
And even though the city of Indianapolis requires permits for temporary structures, the city lacks that authority in this case because the fair is on state-owned property, as The Associated Press reports.
Also at issue is why no evacuation was ordered before the 60 mph winds and heavy rain reached the fairgrounds. Although Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels at least initially called the stage collapse an unforeseeable “fluke,”  a timeline released by the Indiana State Police indicates that fair officials were alerted about the likelihood of a severe thunderstorm several times in the hours before the disaster.
“It was quite foreseeable,” said Mike Smith, senior vice president of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions. “The State Fair should have had someone making a call that if a weather warning was issued, the area would have been evacuated immediately.”
A fair spokesman said the fair’s executive director, Cindy Hoye, and Indiana State Police Capt. Brad Weaver were headed to the stage to order an evacuation when it collapsed.
Today, according to another AP account, Daniels said he might support mandating inspections of temporary structures like the State Fair stage that collapsed. He also said, however, that the fair’s existing emergency plan is a “pretty well thought through policy.”
The Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the state fire marshal are investigating the accident.
According to Rolling Stone, the Indianapolis tragedy was the third outdoor concert of the summer in which abrupt, heavy winds destroyed all or part of a stage, prompting questions about whether outdoor shows are safe for bands and fans. The previous concerts disrupted by winds were in Ottawa, Canada, and Tulsa, Okla. In both of those cases, tragedies were narrowly avoided.