Re : Bij Indiana State Fair bleven mensen ook staan

State officials said their investigation could take weeks, but officials at the fair, which has been a tradition here for more than 150 years and draws 50,000 visitors on an average day, defended their handling of the storm threat. In a building not far from the stage, they said that all evening a contingent of officials — including a meteorologist — had been monitoring the weather, which had, since before 6 p.m., included a severe thunderstorm watch from the National Weather Service. Over the next few hours, the fair staff contacted the Weather Service at least four times, a report issued by the Indiana State Police said.

Minutes before the accident, as the crowd waited for Sugarland to take the stage after a warm-up act, an announcement was made warning that a storm was approaching that might delay the show and that shelter was available in three nearby facilities.

Some people left. But the announcement was not an order to evacuate. So, with no rain falling, others stayed put, particularly Sugarland’s most devoted fans, those closest to the front of the stage in an area called the Sugarpit — the site of some of the worst damage soon afterward.

Andy Klotz, a spokesman for the fair, described the sequence of events this way: At 8:39 p.m., the Weather Service upgraded the storm threat in Marion County, where Indianapolis is, to a severe thunderstorm warning from a watch; at 8:45 p.m., a local radio host who was making announcements on stage told the audience that an arriving storm might delay the show and named three shelters; and, at 8:49 p.m., as Ms. Hoye and a State Police official were approaching the stage to call for a formal evacuation for a storm that they believed was at least 25 minutes away, the rigging collapsed.

“Could we have stopped the show? Yes,” Mr. Klotz said. “But you don’t want to overreact. And you don’t want to underreact.”

Even as the metal rigging high above a packed concert here began to shudder, Indiana State Fair officials were walking toward the stage, preparing, they said, to order the crowd to evacuate to avoid an arriving storm.


“We were en route,” Cynthia Hoye, the fair’s executive director, recalled on Monday, after a somber memorial service to remember the five people who died and dozens of others who were hurt on Saturday night when the overhead rigging collapsed during the state fair show.

“All of the sudden the wind picked up,” said Ms. Hoye, who never made it to the stage before what she and others here described as a devastating, isolated wind gust of more than 60 miles per hour.