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Topic: Reports of shooting at Batman Premier.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-21-2012 03:13 AM
quote: Frank Angel
My dad was a NYC fire inspector and he always said that in most fires where there are large number of people trying to escape, more deaths take place, not from the actual fire/smoke, but from trampling. Fire is a vicious beast, but people become wild animals in such situations.
Couldn't agree more, from personal experience. Summer 2000, City Screen York - we shared a building with an Italian restaurant that had a wood-burning pizza oven. One Friday evening some smoke from it got ingested into our air conditioning intake (the oven was an aftermarket addition, so to speak, and some idiot had positioned the chimney too close to the intakes on the roof). That triggered a smoke detector and then a complete fire evacuation. Because customers could smell smoke in the main auditorium they of course thought the building was on fire, and rushed down the emergency exit stairs (several quite steep staircases, because the theatre was above the restaurant). The end result was that no-one was hurt by the fire or smoke, but there was one broken ankle and about a dozen cases of cuts and bruises by the time everyone was out.
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-21-2012 03:55 AM
The media is really scraping the bottom of the desperate barrel here.
Local Teens Had Recently Been in Theater of Colorado Shooting
quote:
Posted: Sat 12:14 AM, Jul 21, 2012
Reporter: Andrew Colegrove
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – The location of the massacre in Colorado shocked local teens who’d recently been to the theater where the shooting happened.
Kaity Hanna got back from a trip to Colorado a couple weeks ago.
She thought she'd remember the trip for being the first time she saw the Rocky Mountains. Now it'll stick with her for a much darker reason.
She plays for the Mountain Thunder, a traveling softball team made of teens from Cabell, Wayne and Kanawha counties.
The girls played in a tournament in Colorado called the Sparkler. Their hotel was just a few minutes from the Century 16 Theater.
Kaity, who just graduated from Cabell Midland, says they were there the night of July 1 and saw the movie “Ted.”
The location of Thursday night's massacre came to them as a shocking revelation.
“If it had happened sooner we could have been there,” she said. “We could have been in the theater. I talked to one of the other players. It really hit her hard realizing it could have been us."
Midland student Jordan Colliflower was also left stunned when she heard about the location of the massacre.
“We could have been there,” Jordan said. “It could have been us in that same theater."
It was equally disturbing for their families knowing their loved ones had been in the same spot of the tragedy.
"I wasn't for sure it was the same theater,” Jordan’s father Eric Colliflower said. “When I woke her up she said ‘That was the same theater we were in.’ I was like, just kind of got sick to my stomach."
"They decided to go to a movie, just innocent fun like most teenagers do,” Jordan’s stepmother Julia Colliflower said. “I'm sure there were tons of teenagers (Thursday) night in Colorado that were doing the same thing. Some deranged person decided he could do something bad to them. Now a lot of lives are changed forever."
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-21-2012 04:18 AM
If anybody doubts the capacity of stairs to kill people look up Bethnal Green Tube disaster, which happened in London on the 3rd of March 1943. 173 people, including 62 children, died, all but one at the scene, on a short stairway leading down from the street to what would eventually become the booking hall at an uncompleted Underground station which was being used as an air raid shelter. It wasn't a real attack, but a false alarm. The station eventually opened in, I think, 1949,and is two stops before Stratford where the Olympics will be next week.
Take care on stairs. I'm always picking up slippery objects, usually food-related, which students have dropped on the stairs at work.
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Chuck McGregor
Film Handler
Posts: 47
From: Bremen, ME, USA
Registered: Mar 2012
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posted 07-21-2012 10:07 AM
People involved with our one and only local cinema (non-profit, multi-purpose built in the 1870s as a "hall") have been thinking about changing the flat floor seating to stadium-style. This would mimic the picture Brad posted of the Century 16 theater. The building's existing architecture would likely preclude rear exits.
For other reasons, I've voiced opposition to such a change. Now I can now add several safety issues to the my opposition.
Consider also that we have audiences consisting largely of many "aged" patrons that attend showings of things like Met Live and other cultural showings, which I'm sure could be true of other cinemas. I don't see how stadium seating would improve their experience when stairs are a daily challenge in general for many. Something like jumping over the railing is not exactly an option for them in a fire or other emergency like this one.
I've been on the design team for over a hundred "legitimate" theaters from several hundred seats to over 4,000. I don't recall any with some type of stadium (raked) seating that was ever designed without rear and often center cross aisles with exits from both.
There are codes that specify physical dimensions for egress based on occupancy. However, one of the criterion architects used were formulas that calculate egress times for the audience. This is a routine design calculation for sports stadiums and arenas that actually dates back to the ancient Coliseum in Rome. This was a marvel of of such design where some 50,000(!) people could leave the venue within about 5 minutes. Not too bad for a 2,000 year-old design without any building codes driving it!
However there are statements like this: "IMAX theaters have long known that it is much safer for an audience to enter at the bottom of a theater and walk up steps if necessary. It cannot be stressed enough that those planetaria with raked or stepped seating use a bottom-up exit path."
And then there is this:
"Complicating the [egress time] issue are common assumptions concerning the movement patterns of occupants during an emergency. These assumptions, according to the SFPE Handbook, are the following:
> Everyone starts to evacuate at the same instant.
> Occupant flow will not be interrupted by the individual's decisions.
> All or most of the people involved do not have disabilities that would significantly impede their ability to keep up with the group."
Having been through more than a few design discussions about this safety issue (egress times) it seems to me that just on appearances (though I could be wrong) that the cinemas such as the Century 16 fall short of what I've experienced applied to the design of legitimate theaters in terms of audience safety.
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David Bowler
Film Handler
Posts: 9
From: St. Louis, MO
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 07-21-2012 10:49 AM
Marco-
The statements I heard from some of the people in theater #9 said that the suspect entered the theater, dropped the canisters of tear gas and began firing on the audience during a quiet scene in the Bat cave between Bruce and Alfred.
At the same time, the adjacent theater featured a scene with guns/gunfire that momentarily blended in with the incident in theater #9.
Nonetheless, it's still chilling. Movie theaters used to be a 2-3 hour escape from the hustle and bustle of the outside world for a lot of people. The suspect, James "Joker" Holmes, just joined the growing list of cowards who is contributing to the disintegration of our freedoms and feelings of security.
I don't want to jump on the bandwagon clamoring for public execution or anything, but I will say that maybe it's time for this country to re-think it's priorities and start actually communicating with one another. These feelings of isolation, frustration and anger are not going to just go away for the people who aren't endowed with social gifts.
In my humble opinion, for far too long, way too much stress and time has been put on achieving status, possessions, huge bank accounts and ultimately pointless endeavors to stroke one's ego and give them a false sense of value. Strip away all the crap that isn't imperative to the survival of our species and we're left with each other.
Maybe it's time we stop this futile and obvious competition and actually start caring for one another instead of putting up the facade that we do.
/end rant
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David Bowler
Film Handler
Posts: 9
From: St. Louis, MO
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 07-21-2012 12:12 PM
Mike-
I tend to agree with you, especially on the over-reaction of the press.
That being said, I don't think the analogy made with automobiles is really applicable here. Car accidents have been happening since automobiles have been manufactured. How many movie theater shootings have been that calculated and have produced body counts and casualties like this? Compare that with the dramatic increase in gun violence since the late sixties and the growing number of people reporting mental illness and you can start to see why people are truly afraid.
Also, I can imagine people relate sitting in a movie theater enjoying a film to be a more relaxing environment than going from one destination to another while in an automobile. In a car, as a result of pure function, your basic biology and anatomy are at the mercy of physics. Check your mirrors, keep your eyes on the road, stay under a certain speed and stay alert. In a movie theater, get some concessions, get a good seat and get ready to enjoy a film you've probably been waiting for.
Two totally different animals.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-21-2012 12:18 PM
quote: Joe Redifer
I've been in the theater before. Why aren't the news media beating down my door?
I've driven past that theater a couple times. Why isn't the media interviewing me?
Maybe the next thing we'll see is news stories covering the reactions of people learning about this incident on the news. It will be in the style of YouTube reaction videos of people watching things like "world's biggest zit" or "two girls, one cup."
quote: David Bowler
Compare that with the dramatic increase in gun violence since the late sixties and the growing number of people reporting mental illness and you can start to see why people are truly afraid.
Where are you getting your statistics?
The United States' homicide rate peaked in 1991, with 9.1 homicides per 100,000 people. I was living in New York City at the time. In 1990 there were more than 2000 murders in the 5 boroughs. Today, the murder rate in NYC is about a quarter that total -less than 500 murders in a city of over 8 million people. And the US' homicide rate in 2010 was 4.8 murders per 100,000 about half the rate in 1990.
The media is the real problem. They make it seem like there are more murders, robberies and other bad things happening now than ever before. And that's just plain bullshit.
Here in Lawton lots of people like to think this town is a dangerous hell hole when it's practically Disneyland™ compared to a lot of other small cities. They pine away thinking about the good old days of the early 1970s when this town was supposedly a lot safer, not realizing Lawton set its murder record of 18 homicides in 1 year in 1973.
I feel sorry for kids growing up now. So many are confined indoors, hooked up to video game consoles and computers instead of being outside. Thanks to the media parents think every other neighbor is a potential murderer or pedophile. They don't realize there is actually less crimes of that sort happening today than there were when we were kids.
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