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Return to Safety Calls |
Counterweight System Safety Calls
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Please note the following
pattern of communicating between the loader and the operator
while a line set is being loaded or unloaded. The loader will be sent up to the loading gallery fifty feet above the stage. The loading gallery is a catwalk along one side of the back stage area running from down stage to up stage. The operator remains below at stage level or in some theatres, at a mid-level some fifteen or twenty feet above the stage floor. The operator coordinates the loading or unloading of the batten at stage level instructing the loader to add or remove a certain quantity to counterweights. The weights are stacked on the loading gallery never higher than the lip of the gallery floor. The weights, often called pig irons, in our theatre are 7lbs., 14lbs. and 30lbs. These weights, if dropped from the loading gallery, will do serious damage to who or what they hit. I have been in the business of loading weights for more than twenty years and have never seen a weight dropped but I have heard stories of near misses and scene damaged floors. The safest way to avoid the outside chance that the operator might drop a weight and hit the operator below is to have the loader wait to pick up a pigs until the operator has moved out of the area below the loader. To coordinate the clearing of this area we practice the following pattern of communication. |