Richard Cadena, ETCP RT/CEE: Five Years Ago Today...

At this very instant, there is someone out there who is going to get on stage with an electric guitar or a microphone, and they are trusting that whoever set up the electrical system that powers their gear understands grounding and bonding. That performer has a mother and a father, and perhaps some siblings. They might have a spouse and they might even have children, and all of those people are counting on all of us, as live event professionals, to know enough about our craft to protect their loved one from the hazards of electricity.

Those performers likely know very little about it. They probably don’t know what a ground loop is, or that it is one of the main reasons that an adapter is sometimes used to lift the safety ground on the sound system. Most of them have no idea that creating a faulty ground like this could be lethal to someone who is touching electric guitar strings and some other conductive metal, like a microphone or scaffolding, that is connected to ground. I’m guessing that they don’t know about Les Harvey, a guitar player for the band Stone the Crows, or Keith Relf, the lead singer of the Yardbirds, both of whom died because of faulty grounding. And they’ve probably never heard of Agustin Briolini. So, they likely have no idea that today marks five years since Agustin, a 22 year-old guitar player and lead singer/songwriter in a band called The Krebs, was tragically electrocuted during a sound check. So how would they know his death was the result of a faulty ground? They probably don’t. Nor are they likely know that the accident, like many stage electrocutions, could have been prevented, had someone only known that lifting the ground can be deadly.

It’s too late to save Agustin, but it’s not too late to turn his accident into a learning experience for all of us in the live event production industry. There’s someone out there right now who is in line to be the next victim. unless you and I act. Let’s remember the hard lesson of Agustin’s passing and strive to do better.