03/23/2001
By Leslie Gornstein / Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – Sunday's Academy Awards spectacle will go on as planned, despite a scaffolding collapse that sent five workers to the hospital, Oscar officials said.
Scaffolding erected along the red carpet outside the Shrine Auditorium for coverage of the Oscar ceremony collapsed in a wave early Thursday afternoon.
Most of the mangled metal fell just behind bleachers that were set up for fans and media to view the procession of arriving celebrities before the ceremony.
A portion also tumbled onto a tent over the red carpet that will be used by the celebrities as they enter the auditorium.
Two of the victims were on top of the scaffolding when the collapse occurred, two were behind the bleachers and one was on the bleachers.
One of the workers on top of the scaffolding was reported to be in serious but stable condition at a nearby hospital. The four others were described as being bruised but not seriously hurt.
All of the injured, whose names were not released, were working on stage construction and rigging, said Fire Department spokesman Richard Andrade.
The aluminum scaffolding, commonly used to hold lights and cameras, was draped with cloth and was to be used to shield reporters and celebrities at the ceremony from the late afternoon sun, Andrade said.
Academy spokesman John Pavlik said his organization had not decided whether to provide another screen by show time, but added all events would go on as planned.
"You could all wear caps with bills on them,'' Pavlik quipped about concerns of afternoon sun.
The accident marred an Oscar season that had otherwise gone fairly smoothly for the Academy.
That wasn't the case last year when the event was plagued with misfortune, including the theft of a shipment of 55 Oscar statuettes just days before the show. All but three were recovered in time for the ceremony, and those three remain missing.
A set of Oscar ballots also disappeared in the mail last year after being wrongly routed by the post office.
And, immediately after last year's awards ceremony, a news helicopter developed mechanical problems while hovering over the Shrine Auditorium. It limped 20 miles back to Van Nuys Airport where it crashed, injuring two people inside.
Thursday's accident, which came at the height of pre-Oscar preparations at the Shrine, sent workers running.
"Everybody just started screaming, saying 'Watch out!' 'Watch out!''' said Harvest Smith, an Oscar production worker who witnessed the crash.
"The left side fell first, and then the right side,'' Smith said.
The structure stood about 40 feet wide, 120 feet long and was about 20 feet tall.
Andrade refused to speculate about what triggered the collapse, and state Division of Occupational Safety and Health inspectors who were investigating the accident gave no immediate cause.
Preparations for Sunday's show came to a stop in the area around the accident, but workers continued moving flowers, stage material and recording equipment into the Shrine through other entrances.
Responding to some workers' suggestions that a rush to finish construction may have led to the collapse, Pavlik said the workers were not being unusually hurried.
"This job is always a rush job because you only have X days to get ready for the show,'' Pavlik said. "This thing has been done ahead of schedule. People were talking about how far ahead of schedule they were and that things were going so smoothly.''
