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So, I'm a Youth Group leader at my Church, and we took about 8 kids to see Starfield (a Christian rock band) last night. It was at a church in Abbottsford and there were about 1200 people packing the place. I was sitting up in the balcony during the second song with about 5 of the kids when suddenly the scaffolding holding up all the lights started swaying and finally came crashing down onto the crowd that was jumping around up front. The lights went out for about 10 seconds, and when they came back on the only thing you could see in the middle of it all was a giant hole in the ground where the crowd used to be.

After the initial shock of it all passed, the first thing I realised was that 3 of our kids were down there. There were screams coming from down there, and what we found out later, was that the floor had collapsed underneath all the kids that were moshing and everyone went crashing into the basement about 12 feet below. I grabbed my girlfriend's arm because her younger sister was one of our kids that was down there and I knew she'd go running into the danger zone to find her. I made sure everyone stayed where they were at first so I could try and get a grasp on what we should do. Thank God that within a couple minutes of the collapse, one of our kids that was down there came running up to tell us that the three of them were all ok.

So I grabbed everyone in the group and we headed for the nearest exit. On our way out it was total chaos. People were bleeding and running everywhere. All I cared about at that point was getting everyone with us away from danger, which was the whole church as far as I was concerned at that point. When we got outside, emergency vehicles were on the scene and about 20 minutes later the entire front area was swarming with them. We got to the back parking lot so we would be out of their way, and because I didn't want any of them seeing something that would scar them for life.

So in our group, of the three that were down there, only one of them was hurt, and she wasn't hurt bad. A scrape on the face, and a cut up leg. A lot of the kids seemed like they were going into shock both at the time of the accident and afterwards in the parking lot, but they calmed down after a while. Another one of the kids had blood all over her white shirt, but it wasn't her's. I'm just so thankful that none of them were seriously hurt. Turns out the three that were down there actually did fall through the floor, but were able to get up and out right away. Others weren't so lucky. From the news reports so far, we've heard that 40 people went to hospital with minor injuries and 3 people were in critical condition.

I've never been in or have seen anything like this before, it was absolutely terrifying for the first few minutes when we didn't know what had happened to our three missing kids. My knees were jittery for at least an hour after we had gotten out of there. I know there were a lot of heroic people who jumped down to save people who fell in, and the emergency response was amazingly fast. The only thing I cared about at the time was making sure the kids I was responsible for were safe.

There are already a few news stories online about the accident:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... TopStories

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352707,00.html

Glad to hear your group was mostly uninjured, and definitely glad to hear there were no deaths. Scary stuff. It can happen any time.

Bloody Hell... echo that I'm glad you all made it through relatively unscathed, and it sounds like you did a good job of keeping your head and looking after everyone.

Not entirely appropriate, and it sucks for the three people who were seriously hurt, but this'll make a great story for them later on -- "we moshed so hard we caved the hall in."

Well-handled, dude.

Holy shit, you were there? I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened and I'm sorry you had to go to Abbottsford. That must have been the worst night of your life =(

Sorry that happened but thankfully, no one ended up dead. Well handled on your part though.

Wow. That sounds like something out of a movie, except the fact that it was real, of course. At least nobody got killed in that truly frightening event. Seems that some people know how to keep a level head in a disaster when it happens.

Thanks guys... yeah, it's been pretty surreal the last few hours. I still haven't really grasbed how big of a deal it really was. I'll definately be calling all the kids that were there to make sure they haven't been traumatized or anything like that. I'm also definately going to be keeping up with any news reports that come up about the incident.

wow good to see your not hurt and also functioning:)

I'm glad everyone made it out!

So it's been a few days now, but they still haven't figured out exactly how the floor caved in. They are bringing in engineers to figure it out. The church was rented out to the concert promoters that sold the tickets. The 1200 person compacity was within the limit of what the church is allowed to hold as far as fire codes go.

As for injuries, only one woman was critically injured. She had spinal injuries and is in Vancouver General Hospital still. An 8-year old girl had to stay a few nights at BC Children's Hospital, but I think she's been allowed to go home. All other injuries seem to have been minor, like broken arms and such.

As for the kids I know that fell, they were all sore for the past few days, but seem to be getting better. The girl with the cut cheek and shins is doing well, and should be healed soon enough.

All in all, it is a miracle that nobody was killed... and hopefully the woman with spinal injuries will be able to make a full recovery. They haven't released the details on whether or not that is a possibility. I've decided that from now on I'm only going to concerts with solid floors.

That's relatively good to hear. Probably sounds odd, but the way you kept yourself calm and got things under control makes it sound like you might have some kind of emergency response training. Were you any kind of program that covered stuff like that?

Ostentatious wrote:That's relatively good to hear. Probably sounds odd, but the way you kept yourself calm and got things under control makes it sound like you might have some kind of emergency response training. Were you any kind of program that covered stuff like that?

Actually, no... I don't have any training for something like that. It was basically a matter of being one of only two leaders in our group, so we needed to stay calm, or the kids might have freaked out even worse. The other leader that I was with kept a very level head as well.

Actually, I was reading one of the news reports and one of the witnesses made a point of saying how she was amazed at how calm almost everyone in the building was reacting to what had happened.

Wow, that's terrible Blitz!

But, just glad that in the end, everyone was okay, for the most part.

Hi Blitzwing,

I like what Ostentatious said. It's good that you've seen that you may have a knack for "aid for remote and destitute places" (?) type services. I don't know much at all about it, but I have heard that the main problem with small teams being sent to help many people in clear need relates to emotional control. I think the team tends to exhaust themselves too soon by letting their anxiety, fueled by a denial of the reality of their inability to help everyone, run the show.