There was a condor accident tonight, on the show he’s been working on. He’s not hurt at all, but he saw it happen; he was in the other condor. So if you hear anything on the news, it’s okay; it wasn’t him.
Other guy is alive “…but just barely,” as Mr. Rilch told me.
Just a question: What’s a condor, if it isn’t the bird?
It’s not a bird, it’s not Superman … is it a plane?
Sorry, I should have said.
A condor is a heavy-duty piece of equipment used to elevate lights high above an exterior set. I think, though I’m not sure, that they’re sometimes used in construction, maybe as a light source if they’re working outside of daylight hours, maybe in lieu of scaffolding.
Anyway, the base of it is like a tractor. It has a long, long extensible (?) neck (that’s where they get the name) on the end of which is a bucket. Inside the bucket, there’s enough room for the steering mechanisms, a light, other stuff like gel frames, and an electrician. Mr. Rilch brought his digital camera up into one once. Much amusement when he accidentally hit record again. Ten minutes or so of his butt moving while he adjusted the light to the gaffer’s satisfaction. “Oh, your best side!” said BIL.
The neck can be extended as much as 100 feet, and it can go at any angle from almost completely vertical to almost completely horizontal.
Actually, I should have just said it’s like a crane.
I’ve been googling in an effort to link to a photo, but all the equipment houses take it for granted that you already know what one is, so they just list the features and dimensions.
**Anyway, the point is, apropos of what we still don’t know, about 9:30 last night the other condor just tipped over. Just tipped right over. Mr. Rilch thinks it might have been that the weight wasn’t evenly distributed among the four wheels. It hit another, unoccupied condor, which was probably “Mac”'s saving grace. He’s in Expensive Care right now. Had it been Mr. Rilch’s condor that fell, however, he would have…
There was nothing but concrete below him.
I don’t know precisely how he’s feeling right now. I have some idea, but I’ll never really know.**
And yes, you have to be certified to operate a condor. Mr. Rilch is. So is/was the other guy. So is/was Boss. Who could have been that guy. OSHA is looking into it. There were also news copters overhead; how they knew about this I don’t know. But no on-the-spot reporters, thank Og; it was a gated community.
I’ve got to go tuck Mr. Rilch in now.
Thanks, Rilchiam. Please pass on my best wishes to Mr. Rilch, and to yourself. Glad he’s okay.
Thank you; I’ll do that.
And now that the shock has worn off, I have to smile at the image some of y’all must have gotten from my OP. “What? Her husband flies around on a huge bird? Someone got pecked nearly to death?”
The lighting crew will visit the hospital tomorrow, providing Mac will be out of ICU at that time. He’ll be in no condition to eat one of my cookies, but I’m sending a stuffed animal by way of Mr. Rilch. That’ll be up to Mac’s SO to accept or reject. I dunno; I just wanna give him something.
Mac is out of the hospital, so Mr. Rilch and some other crew members paid their first visits today. His SO said that many other crew members, plus friends and relatives, have popped in and out. The coordinator was also there, just long enough to get some info for the insurance claim. Apart from that, however, no one from the production department has shown their nose around there. Or at the hospital.. :mad: They sent flowers to the hospital. Woo.
The DP is very upset about this. He’s told Mr. Rilch that he will never send anyone up in a condor again. Mr. Rilch has told him not to beat himself up; Mac wasn’t doing anything dangerous, or, in fact, anything at all, when the accident happened. (And privately, he doesn’t think a no-condor policy is feasible anyway.) Plus which, the gaffer, Mr. Rilch and someone else, I forget in what capacity, have inspected what’s left of the condor. They believe they’ve spotted the problem. Suffice to say, it appears that the rental house is the culpable party. :mad: The gaffer also says that he’s never seen or heard of anyone, before this, surviving a condor accident. There was one incident in which the guy could have lived, but he got electrocuted by the power source that fell with him. Mac must have one hell of a guardian angel.
Mr. Rilch keeps saying, “And it could have been me in there.” I’m equally aware of that. Now, I’m not one of those wives who wants to keep her husband’s balls in a velvet box under the bed, so I haven’t made any proclamations to the effect that he’d better not ever go up in a condor again. Instead, I said, “I trust your judgement, and your ability to refuse to work under unsafe circumstances, even if it means your job. Which it probably won’t anyway, if you tell them that you saw a guy almost die.”
Also, Mr. Rilch didn’t work on that show last night (he couldn’t, because he has a standing Sunday-morning gig), but the DP tells him that the crew had to work around the detritus of the smashed condor. I don’t understand that. I mean, if you need proof for the insurance claim, just take some Polaroids and be done with it. I should think that the rubble would be another safety hazard in itself.
Mr. Rilch and I visited today. I haven’t baked anything yet; this was just a spur-of-the-moment visit, because another crew member called, said he was visiting, and did we want to tag along?
It was amazing. Really. Remember, this is the only person Mr. Rilch and his mates have ever heard of surviving a condor accident. The steel cage he was in fell ~60 feet, onto another piece of heavy machinery. He was unconscious for almost half an hour…but he only looks, as “Shane” put it, “like he wiped out on the ski slopes!”
Which is not to say he looked terrific. Broken leg, two black eyes and bruise on his cheekbone, two sets of stitches on one knee (opposite the broken leg. One of the stitch configurations is a perfect right angle.), an elongated and very dark bruise on one arm, and some minor cuts. But he was sitting at the dining room table, not bedridden as I’d anticipated, and at one point, was able to maneuver on crutches to the powder room. Honestly, I thought he’d be spaced out on painkillers, wheezing and grumbling, but he was as bright as a button.
Mr. Rilch’s theory is that the scrim bag (don’t ask) cushioned his internal organs from rupture; it was between him and the side of the cage when he came to rest. As for how he escaped serious head injury, I just don’t know. The guys are calling him “Unbreakable”.
He told us that all during the ambulance ride, he was in conversation with one of the EMTs, asking if people ever got burned out in his profession, if he had any interesting stories about the results of bar brawls, and what he thought of “Bringing Out the Dead”…They were okay with this, because it proved that he was coherent and aware. I daresay that it also kept him (Mac, I mean) from freaking out.
Anyway, that’s how he was. Amazing.
I’m glad to hear Mac is doing alright. He really was lucky!
I have a friend of the family who wasn’t so lucky - and that was just in a forklift (slipped on the ice outside his worksite in January about 10 years ago). The forklift crushed him completely, leaving behind a nearly 100% blind wife and a 4 year old daughter. Very sad for everyone.
Keep giving Mr. Rilch hugs - I’m glad that he’s ok, though I’ll bet he’ll be shaken up for a while!