A settlement has been reached in the Cirque du Soleil appeal of rulings by OSHA in the incident in “Ka” that led to the death of artist Sarah Guillot-Guyard on June 29. The result is all but one of the violations issued against Cirque in the incident have been withdrawn by agency investigators.
The original findings by the federal safety agency were a series of violations and fines adding up to more than $25,000. But in November, Cirque appealed all of the citations, and near the end of that month OSHA had withdrawn its findings for each citation except for the violation in which the artists in the Final Battle scene, the act during which Guillot-Guyard fell 94 feet to her death, “were not protected or prevented from striking the overhead forest grid as they used wire rope, controllers and winches to ascend from the Sand Cliff Deck to the Forest Grid Catwalk.”
As noted in OSHA documents specifying the citations, previous incidents have resulted from employees striking the catwalk, and Guillot-Guyard reportedly hit that apparatus on ascent, causing her wire rope to be jarred out of its pulley and severed by the edge of that pulley, leading her to fall free. The fine issued by OSHA for that infraction and the formal investigation of the incident are now closed.
{ SOURCE: Las Vegas Sun | http://goo.gl/EBLoqt }
