Saturday, September 19, 2015

CIB Officials Still Don't Know Cause Of Falling Bolts From Stadium's Retractable Roof

More than two weeks after bolts from the retractable roof at Lucas Oil Stadium broke and rained down on fans causing injury to three while the roof was retracting during a pre-season game, CIB officials still are unsure of the source of the malfunction but assure the public the facility is safe for use with the roof remaining closed. That was the official line given at a press conference conducted yesterday by the CIB's executive director Barney Levengood and the state stadium authority's John Klipsch.

The CIB says there was actually just one bolt that broke and fell. That one 7/8" bolt broke into several pieces. Officials also discovered at least seven other bolts that were loose upon further inspection. Klipsch assured reporters a problem of this sort for a 7-year old stadium is not unusual, although he conceded the mechanism should have been inspected prior to its use during half-time at the pre-season game on the orders of the billionaire Colts owner Jim Irsay. “It’s a huge building,” Klipsch said. “All brand new structures have a loose screw or bolt after seven years. It’s not something that’s unusual in all construction or manufacturing.”

I came across this video Uni-Systems, the company that designed the retractable roof, posted to YouTube. It says four camera had to be installed on each of the roof's retractable panels to show the retractable roof's progression during opening and closing. In the event of a malfunction, the cameras wirelessly transmit the video to the stadium's control center. Someone from the media should ask the CIB to release to the public those video feed's the stadium's control center received at the time of the malfunction. That's assuming the cameras are still operable after 7 years.

Advance Indiana also recalls the CIB approving the awarding of a costly contract this past year to an Illinois company to repaint all of the steel trusses supporting the retractable roof. Who was monitoring the progress of that work. Who inspected the work to assure it was done in accordance with the CIB's requirements? Is it possible damage to the retractable roof might have occurred during the repainting project?

6 comments:

Chas. M. Navarra said...

"Someone from the media should ask the CIB to release to the public those video feed's the stadium's control center received at the time of the malfunction."

I am willing to wager that almost all of our local media must first come to Advance Indiana to learn the important questions to ask.

I've been told by reporters more than once that media company managers are more interested in offering "happy news" over the substantive. The managers don't want to "offend" viewers with hard news that might have an unpleasant aspect to it.

Gary R. Welsh said...

I think it has more to do with the fact our local media is in bed with the downtown mafia that runs Indianapolis and decides what's news and what's not news. There's a reason representatives of each are included on GIPC's board of directors, the city's shadow government.

Anonymous said...

I'm still amazed that it was allowed to be open in the middle of a game, while the stadium had fans in it. I liken it to opening a convertible while driving down the interstate.

Anonymous said...

It's obvious. They had someone in the rafters drop metal pieces on a light pre-season crowd to give the team an excuse to keep the roof closed the entire year to protect the Colts from playing outside where they're horrible.

It's a sheltered, protected, coddled team that gets all the calls and can't win without help from the refs and the League Office.

The Colts' fans are also wimps who only want to watch games in a living room, so opening a roof and bringing in football weather will only chase away the frail Colts' fans.

Anonymous said...

Patriots

Anonymous said...

If the bolt was sheared off as was originally reported, I'm guessing that the roof is not opening straight. It's getting hung up on one of the tracks and that's putting tension on it. I'm guessing that one of the fine union crafstman who built the thing probably dropped a nail clipper in the track or something and didn't pick it back out because the job order didn't specify how to do so.

That said, I really couldn't care less what happens over at Circus Maximus. More telling is the general obsessive compulsiuve concern on the part of the average Hoosier with this silly little inconsequential billion dollar toy roof while vritually the entire city outside of the (he said breathlessly) Mile Square crumbles before his or her very eyes. Nobody much cares about any of that. At some point, people need to step up and take responsibility instead of always blaming the media. You're free to ignore the media and their paywalled empires. Many of us do. The rest of us just clear cookies from time to time.