A Little Bit of Perspective

Josh and I celebrated ten years of marriage on August 4. Since Josh was out of town on business I surprised him with Sugarland tickets for Saturday, August 13 at the Indiana State Fair. We have been to the fair for many concerts before and (really) are not big fans of the grandstands. The grandstands are old and leave little room for long legs and they pack you in there like sardines. On the flip side, what better place to watch a country concert than the "prime" hick spot like the state fair, right? What other place breeds Wranglers, cowboy hats and boots? Another advantage of a state fair concert is that they don't serve alcohol so it's kind of nice to not get beer spilled on you or have to watch the "drama" that follows these intoxicated (and most of the time) annoying people. Little did we know that an evening that we had planned as a fun, light-hearted and entertaining would turn into an evening that we will remember forever. For the first 24 hours after the event each time we closed our eyes this tragic event played over and over on the inside of our eyelids.

Let me give you an idea of where our seats were. We could look at the stage straight on but were almost at the top of the grandstands, like about seven rows from the top. Thank goodness for last minute buying and cheap seats. (The picture below is a picture we took to while Sara Bareillas was still performing.) This was our view.

We promised Chaney we would take a picture of Sugarland but we did some test shots on the opening act to see what kind of shots we could get. She is in the green dress with her guitar and her piano is behind her. The dream catcher like thing in the background is the set for Sugarland. The white flare-like light fixtures are for Sara's set also. All of the light flares, piano, musicians were all off the stage when it collaped. In fact, the stage hands had just finished setting up the entire stage for Sugarland's show.

From our perspective we were able to watch the weather (lightning, clouds, dust, etc) roll in. I'm not going to give you a count by count assessment of what went on. The news has given us plenty of play-by-play of the happenings and if you are like me then you are probably sick of hearing it. I've heard accurate stories and some not so accurate stories. I've heard of people giving themselves all the credit about how they lifted the trusses by themselves and single-handidly saved people. I can tell you everything that I saw was a group effort. It's amazing to me that with 14,000 people to see an event that you can have almost 14,000 different stories and perspectives. With that said, I can tell you I have not seen one radar that could prepare you (or a stage) for 75 mph wind gusts. Being from the country and seeing first hand damage of straight-line winds, this was not straight line winds. This tent/canopy was the only thing damaged. Straight-line winds would have a path. As good as the meteorologists are in Indy, none could have known the exact moment of the gusts. Watching the stage fall from our perspective was like watching it in slow motion. I compare it to watching your kids build a block tower. You can see that its slowly starting to lean to oneside but by the time you try to warn them the damage has already been done and the structured is scattered everywhere.

As soon as the structure fell I thinks it's safe to say that the madness set in. We witnessed people in the grandstand going into complete shock, like shutdown mode. They were paralyzed with fear and literally would not move. Our thinking was that they must have thought that a tornado was near and coming toward the actual grandstand. We heard accounts from other concert goers of some audience members trampeling out so fast that they were literally running over people. One specific story we heard that a pregnant lady got knocked down and her husband was on top of her covering and doing his best to protect her from the mad rush. (No, this was not me.) From a personal perspective I can tell you that Josh and I were calm. In a chaotic moment like this I'm sure my pregnancy hormones could have raged and I could have gone all "crazy" on these people but I was completely calm. I know and understand that this peace I felt was only given by God. I had no doubt that we would make it out ok and be completely safe. However, that was not true for everyone there. We knew as soon as that structure fell that there were instant fatalities, but the question was how many. What we could take heart and pride in was watching our community, brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow Hoosiers immediately stepping up and helping people out. Generousity and love were pouring out of these volunteers to get these trapped spectators/workers out. Seriously, this was the best moment to see people helping people. Josh and I quickly moved out of the grandstands and went to our car as soon as we could. We were able to get out of the grandstands and into our car within 20 minutes of the stage collapsing. On the way home I don't think we said two words to each other. We were emotionally drained after seeing an event like this.

An event like this is tragic in so many ways, for so many families, not only for the ones who were actual victims but also for the entertainers themselves (Sugarland and Sara Bareillas) and for the other spectators who witnessed all of this. Josh and I hugged and kissed on the kids a little more the next day. We were just a little bit more grateful for what we had that day. Who would have ever thought that some of these people would never return home after attending a concert? I think its safe to say that the next time we attend a concert we will seriously look at the venue and stage set up. Maybe never getting front row seats is a blessing in disguise.

Below is the link to the YouTube video of the stage collapsing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwSnsVcDi8c