The main stage at the Tomorrowland festival in Antwerp, Belgium, burned to the ground the day before the festival opening:
According to early reports, this happened during testing of some pyrotechnics, but the question I have is: Looking at the way this went up (there are lots of videos online), was it ever even safe?
The flames and smoke being produced look like something oil-based is burning, as though the whole set was constructed from sculpted foam or similar.
I don’t know if fire crews just decided to contain it rather than to try to extinguish the blaze, but there was no remnant of the set left at the end - it looks more like it burned so fast and hot that it couldn’t be put out.
Fortunately nobody was hurt, but I am sure that would be a different story if this had happened during the event when a crowd would be present. What was this set made from and is it a good idea to mix it with pyrotechnics?
There is a long and tragic history of combining foam with pyrotechnics. That was the root cause of The Station fire in Rhode Island. Among too many others.
Yes, the main stage may have been made of some sort of foam, because that’s lightweight, easy to sculpt and color, and less labor and material intensive than many alternatives.
It is also an incredibly poor choice to mix with pyrotechnics.
They are fortunate it burned before the event and not during.
Yeah, if it had gone up at night time, with tens of thousands of people (in various states of intoxication) in front of it and performers and crew on stage, backstage, etc, there would be a significant death toll from the fire and the ensuing stampede.
Those flames are multi-stories high. That fire is out of control & hot! I doubt you’d find an engineer anywhere who would certify that the metal scaffolding skeleton is still safe to use after being subject to unknown temps for an unknown (exactly) amount of time, & even if you did find one, I doubt any insurance company would sign off on using that again. IOW, that was a huge pile of trash that was burning. There’s no point in putting any firefighters at risk. Nope, fight it defensively. Keep it from spreading (if there’s anything else in the area that could burn) & hit it with a lot of water from master streams from a distance & once it’s knocked down maybe let firefighters go in with hand lines to put out the hot spots, but only then if they feel it’s safe enough; otherwise, they’ll just use tower ladders to pour water on it for a day or so.
Anybody else think this thread was about that stage that rises out of the ground at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland? I had nightmares about people getting trapped on that stage when I was a kid.
Absolutely agree - nobody needed rescuing and it was a structure in the middle of an open space - it makes perfect sense to contain the blaze rather than try to extinguish it - which seems like it would be really hard to do anyway - but doesn’t this make the point? - there was no mode in which this thing could ever have burned other than rapidly and uncontrollably, which I think supports the argument it was always inherently an unsafe construction.
Belgium’s Tomorrowland electronic music festival was set to begin on Friday with an alternative set-up for the main stage after the original burnt down in a huge fire earlier this week. Europe’s largest electronic music festival was scheduled to open its gates at 2 pm (1200 GMT), with the alternative main stage to open at 4 pm. From Saturday, the entire festival site is expected to be open to visitors from noon, the festival team said. Its organizers scrambled to create an alternative set-up for the main stage after a fire tore through the original late on Wednesday evening.
I’ve never been to Disneyland but I did think that this was going to be about the permanent stage that is near Carousel of Progress and Space Mountain at Disneyworld.
Nonsense. Pyrotechnics have been used in many shows without catastrophic fires. Just as the vast majority of commercial jets arrive at their destinations without incident. Safety rules inhibit innovation and cost money. /s
