Source : Perth Now news
A packed music festival at Coolangatta was thrown into chaos on Sunday afternoon when a temporary grandstand on the beach gave way during a live performance, forcing the event to stop and emergency crews to move into the crowd.
The collapse happened during Boom Crash Opera’s set at the sold-out Red Hot Summer Tour, with police, medics and event staff quickly clearing people from the area as injured patrons were assessed.
One witness described the moment the structure came down just after 2.30pm.
“I was over behind it and we looked up at the scaffolding and saw it collapsing in on itself,” he told the Courier Mail.
“The whole thing just collapsed.
Off-duty nurses Claire Borg, from Macksville, and Alicia Glohe, from the Gold Coast, were sitting near the fence in front of the grandstand when they heard the noise and turned to see the seating fail.
“We heard this almighty crash, we looked back and all the seats collapsed,” Ms Borg told the Courier Mail.
“It was like this crash and I saw people bouncing.”
Ms Glohe described the confusion in the seconds after the collapse.
“As we were listening to the stage you could hear a commotion behind us,” Ms Glohe told the masthead.
“We didn’t realise what it actually was until you heard the crowd. I turned around and could see the grandstand look like a wave.”
The two women then helped injured concertgoers, including a woman whose ankle had been trapped under the platform.
They also assisted with moving another person with a shin injury and one more with a wrist injury to the medical tent.
“It was really horrible,” Ms Borg said.
“It was just this crash and then it was quiet. There weren’t any screams. We just heard a clunk, clunk, clunk.”
At least one person received treatment from medical staff in the immediate aftermath, while construction workers and others inspected the damaged structure on Sunday afternoon.
