Suddenly there's a burst of incident reporting going on, and there's at least one new incident-reporting group on FetLife
Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links., plus reports in various rope groups.
We were the first, of course! Where ForumBondage leads, others follow.
There'll be the usual FetLife problems, inevitably. The same thing cross-posted in different groups so the responses are spread around. Too many places all doing very much the same job, making it difficult to find things and keep up with it all. And if you've spent much time on FL, you'll know what a lot of FL people can be like and the way that long discussions tend to go... FetLife serves a lot of needs very well, but IMO it does have a number of weaknesses too. We aim have a rather different environment here.
Anyway, the very well-known and respected Midori has recently had an Incident with a suspension. You don't have to be a FetLife member, you can read all about it on
Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links., along with a lot of discussion including this quote, apparently from the woman who was dropped:
"Midori tied a slipknot on my sole load bearing suspension line, causing me to fall out of suspension onto the bare concrete floor"
If that is true - a suspension totally dependent on a quick-release slipped knot - all I'm going to say is that I'm very surprised. And I could say a lot more. I'm also tempted to revive the crash-mat discussion that got rather heated here some time ago...
Anyway, it seems as if this one ended badly, but not as badly as it easily might have done. And it certainly has many lessons for all of us.
Actually I'm not sure what know do you mean when you say slipknot. I searched Google, but music videos are there.
Quick-release or "slipped" knot where you finish by pushing a bight through a loop, not the whole working end. So the knot can be released by pulling on the free end - or by the bight working free as the knot moves around under load...
Simplest possible version shown in the attachment.
I read it already on FL and in Midori's article but the concrete facts are few.
Was is really a single slip knot securing the main line ?
Was it some other mistake ?
Who knows ... maybe even Midori doesn't know. If the line untied itself spontaneously then there was no knot to examine afterwards.
We can just be thankful that the consequences were not more serious and we can all bear it in mind when we are doing our own suspensions.
Everyone can make a mistake ...
(05-02-2012 10:17 PM)Different Drummer Wrote: Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links.Was is really a single slip knot securing the main line ?
I don't know any more than you do because my sources are exactly the same, which is why I phrased what I wrote rather carefully! But you will know from reading those sources that there is at least one reliable witness who reports being concerned about the adequacy of a knot in the main suspension line before the incident happened.
Here, we should avoid further speculation about the cause of the incident before the facts are completely clear (or else we might go the way of the FL thread!)
Quote:Everyone can make a mistake ...
Yes indeed, and as Midori says (confirmed by my own experience), sooner or later, if you keep going long enough, everybody will.
Those interested in the technical details of how the suspension line was secured in this incident should seek out MarkDV8's post in
Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links.. I do not know Mark personally so I do not wish to ask him for permission to post his words here.
According to the description, the suspension line was finished with a single half hitch.
@radio99 - thanks for that FetLife link. It's a parallel thread that I hadn't spotted before, and it adds nothing to what little we actually know about what happened - MarkDV8's comments are repeated elsewhere, and he's the "reliable witness" I referred to in my last post.
What it does do, IMO, is to point up the eternal FetLife problem of broadly parallel threads about the same thing in different groups, with many people contributing to several of them, some posts cross-posted and others not, people replying in one place to a point made in another, and general difficulty in following everything in a coherent way. It's one of the reasons why I got fed up with FL and only visit occasionally these days, rather than several times a day as I did two or three years ago. FetLife is great for ephemeral chit-chat but a disaster area (IMHO) for extended serious discussion of important issues. "One Topic, One Place" - the policy here - is surely a better way. Or so it seems to me.
Be that as it may, the FL thread that radio99 posted does have several people - some of them members and ex-members here - arguing very sensibly that as we have little hard information it is somewhere between pointless and irresponsible to speculate.
So I'll try to list what we know for sure, "for practical purposes near enough to sure to make hardly any difference", with rather little certainty, and what we know nothing at all about.
1. For sure:
a. The experienced and respected rigger and performance artist Midori did a suspension at a "fetish dinner" with another experienced rope performer as the suspendee.
b. During the performance an incident / accident happened resulting in the suspendee being dropped an unknown distance onto a concrete floor.
c. Her head hit the floor. There was considerable bleeding. There was no loss of consciousness beyond a very few seconds, if at all.
d. Midori took a "the show must go on" approach rather than bringing the performance to an immediate end, helped the sub to her feet, and "danced her off" the stage before getting medical assistance.
e. Midori paid the medical bills.
2. "for practical purposes near enough to sure to make hardly any difference":
a. At some stage during the performance, Midori tied off a suspension line - probably "the sole suspension line" - with some form of slip knot / slippery hitch / quick release knot. MarkDV8, another very experienced suspension rigger, saw that and was concerned that it was inadequate but didn't intervene because he assumed Midori knew what she was doing and he didn't know which way she was going to develop it. Most of us, I think, would have done the same.
b. Midori's stage costume would have interfered with clear vision and hearing.
c. Midori did not conduct a medical-professional-level assessment of possible head, neck, and spinal cord injury before deciding to move the sub and "dance her off stage".
d. There was no "crash mat" of any kind underneath the suspension.
3. with rather little certainty:
a. Conditions on stage - not reported but there seems to be a general assumption that there would have been loud music, either inadequate lighting or flashing lights etc., and not an environment conducive to good observation or clear thinking.
b. How far the sub's costume - which included some form of mask referred to as "filling up with blood" - might have interfered with assessment of her injury.
4. What we know nothing at all about:
a. The nature of the suspension tie, the height from which she fell, whether it was a "free fall" or slowed by friction in the ropework etc., how she hit the ground, whether her head hit first or later, where on her head the impact with the ground was, where that blood was coming from...
b. Why and how the tie failed. We know that despite the "breaking rope" image on the blog - put there for dramatic effect by someone not directly involved - this was not one of those very rare rope breakage incidents. We do not know whether the "slip knot" worked loose, which can easily happen if a knot flexes under strain e.g. with a swinging spinning struggling "performing" load underneath, especially if there is only a short bight involved, or whether perhaps Midori intended to release a different knot and pulled on the wrong loose end by mistake, or whether the critical loose end got caught up in something else and pulled out by "accident".
That's a personal view of things, others may well assess the evidence differently.
OK, so there are two main issues.
First, the use of what would universally be seen as a totally wrong knot to secure a main suspension line. And a question: why did she do it?
Second, once the nightmare scenario that every suspension rigger dreads had happened, did Midori deal with it properly? For instance, should she immediately have ended the performance, drawn the stage curtains (if there were any) and kept the sub in place until a competent medical professional arrived to assess the risk level involved in moving her? It's worth remembering here that the worst scenario (as I understand it, and I'm not a doctor) is spinal cord injury leading to permanent below-the-neck paralysis. And that might be caused by the original incident, and also by moving the patient too soon, without a proper assessment, and without the proper equipment to do it safely.
IMO the use of a simple slip knot without any precautions to prevent accidental release for a main suspension line is simply irresponsible, very bad practice, and plain wrong. I would have to question whether a rigger who does that as standard practice could be regarded as competent.
There are precautions that could make it acceptable e.g. during transitions from one position to another in a performance. For instance, you could tie off a suspension line with a slippery hitch with a very long bight - something over 30cm - and then tie a loose overhand knot in the protruding bight while still leaving a good long "tail" of bight beyond that. The bulk of the overhand knot would prevent the bight from slipping free and dropping the suspendee, but it could still be untied easily to allow a controlled release.
I also take the view that nothing is more important than the Health & Safety of rope subs or bunnies or bottoms or whatever you care to call them. If there is a serious incident such as the one under discussion, the absolute priority is to deal with it in a fast and professional way. The interests of the paying audience are nothing in comparison. They know they are paying to watch something potentially dangerous, they must accept the chance that their entertainment might be cut short if something goes wrong.
(06-02-2012 02:39 AM)harper Wrote: Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links.What it does do, IMO, is to point up the eternal FetLife problem of broadly parallel threads about the same thing in different groups, with many people contributing to several of them, some posts cross-posted and others not, people replying in one place to a point made in another, and general difficulty in following everything in a coherent way.
Yes. On the other hand, there's far more riggers and bunnies on fetlife than here, which is a huge advantage for an incident report group.
True of course. We don't have anything like the reach that FL does, and never will. But we do have the advantage of specialisation, and don't forget the many guests who pass through every day. I keep an eye on these things, and I know that many of them spend a fair bit of their time looking at INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS > REPORTS.
Interesting that, since the flurry of activity around The Midori Incident slowed down, the FetLife group has had exactly as many new reports as we've had.
None.