For Pittsburgher Fabian Carrazana, going to a hockey game or concert means braving the vertigo-inducing pitch of PPG Paints Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe upper bowl is terrifying,\u201d Carrazana said Wednesday, two days after witnessing a man at a Pittsburgh Penguins game suffer life-threatening injuries after falling from the venue\u2019s upper level.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so steep, and, by the time you get to the upper bowl, all the seats are so close together, and there are no barriers between those seats,\u201d Carrazana of Beechview told TribLive. \u201cIt\u2019s always concerning, being up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carrazana is hardly alone feeling unsafe in the nose-bleed seats of the 15-year-old arena.<\/p>\n
Across the country there are horror stories of spectators tumbling over railings, flipping onto fields and dropping onto concrete.<\/p>\n
Falls and injuries are part of life at modern-day stadiums, where engineers and designers have worked to boost attendance and improve \u201cfan experiences\u201d by packing more bodies into new arenas, according to experts.<\/p>\n
The results often include steeper steeps, less arm and leg room between seats, and concerns about safety measures such as railings.<\/p>\n
The PPG Paints Arena incident was the third of its kind since April in Pittsburgh, following one each at PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always thought I was just a bit afraid of heights as a kid at my local arena,\u201d a Reddit user named TheDuchin wrote in a Pittsburgh-themed thread Monday<\/a>. \u201cBut as an adult, I can say they really do all (feel) like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Reddit user LarryTheTerrier chimed in to express similar unease.<\/p>\n \u201cI outright refuse to sit in the front row of upper bowls anywhere,\u201d he wrote. \u201c(It) scares me to death.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, after the Penguins scored a goal around 7:15 p.m., Carrazana watched a man two rows ahead of him in Section 234 trying to return to his seat. The man was working his way upward, struggling as he made his away across rows of empty seats, according to Carrazana, who said he was sitting nearby.<\/p>\n \u201cHe started falling onto the bleachers, and every time he was trying to get his footing, he\u2019d step on a seat and the seat would flip over,\u201d Carrazana told TribLive. \u201cThen, it just progressively got faster and faster.\u201d<\/p>\n The man ended up falling back toward the upper-level railing at the lip of the arena\u2019s upper bowl, tumbling into a pane of glass, Carrazana said.<\/p>\n Suddenly, the glass cracked. The man lay against it for a few seconds, Carrazana said.<\/p>\n \u201cThen,\u201d he said, \u201cthe glass gave way.\u201d<\/p>\n The man, who has not been publicly identified, plunged about 35 feet. He struck a person in the suite level below him and then landed in the venue\u2019s 100 level, Pittsburgh police said.<\/p>\n He was hospitalized in critical condition. Neither authorities nor the Penguins released additional information Wednesday.<\/p>\n Keeping mum<\/p>\n Robert Swint, a North Hills native and former NASA engineer, has examined videos and photos of Monday\u2019s fall in Pittsburgh from Houston, where he works as CEO of a private firm specializing in forensic engineering and accident reconstruction.<\/p>\n He questioned whether the height of the barrier that Carrazana said gave way was sufficient.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes the ability to balance yourself tough \u2014 you\u2019d just fall over,\u201d Swint said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re coming down that stairway, it should be protected. Because people will fall.\u201d<\/p>\n Swint described stadiums as \u201ccomplex structures\u201d and said building codes are not uniform from one site to the next.<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey has maintained the steps, railings and other features at PPG Paints Arena were built according to applicable codes.<\/p>\n The Sports and Exhibition Authority, a joint Pittsburgh and Allegheny County entity, owns and leases Acrisure Stadium, PPG Paints Arena and PNC Park. The authority has not responded to multiple phone calls and emails about the angle of the upper concourse\u2019s steep steps or other design matters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe SEA does not manage day-to-day venue operations or event production,\u201d said state Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, chairman of the authority\u2019s board. \u201cNeither I nor the SEA should speak for the Penguins.\u201d<\/p>\n The Penguins did not respond Wednesday to multiple phone calls and emails.<\/p>\n Pittsburgh Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, who serves on the authority board, said Wednesday he was \u201cnot in a position to comment just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt any stadium, basically, there\u2019s always going to be room for an accident like that,\u201d Coghill told TribLive.<\/p>\n \u2018Death stairs\u2019<\/p>\n A reputation for steep steps casts a pall over other sports venues.<\/p>\n Many sports fans point to the bleachers in S\u00e3o Janu\u00e1rio, a soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro<\/a>.<\/p>\n They are \u201cdefinitely death stairs if you don\u2019t look before you step,\u201d one Facebook user, Clara Brand\u00e3o, posted recently.<\/p>\n There\u2019s even a Facebook group that chronicles steep-step woes: \u201cDeath Stairs.\u201d As of Wednesday afternoon, it boasted more than 996,000 members worldwide.<\/p>\n Rachel Tarentino posted a photo of PPG Paints Arena steps to the group\u2019s feed last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe picture doesn\u2019t do them justice, they are STEEP<\/a>,\u201d Tarentino wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cPPG Paints Arena Pittsburgh: I would not get drunk here,\u201d Aaron Crook added<\/a>.<\/p>\n The steep steps at Barclays\u2019 Center, the home of the NBA\u2019s Brooklyn Nets, have triggered multiple lawsuits.<\/p>\n In 2017, a man named Kenneth Silver sued the New York City stadium and its management after someone fell on top of him during a hockey game there, according to court documents.<\/p>\n The man\u2019s attorney, Dean Vigliano, said the fall \u201cwas caused by the dangerous conditions\u201d such as \u201cnarrow aisles, inadequate room between seating rows, an unreasonable steep incline and poor lighting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is steep there,\u201d Vigliano told TribLive this week. \u201cAnd it\u2019s dark \u2014 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any lighting in the aisles.\u201d<\/p>\n Silver settled the matter out of court for \u201ca nominal amount of money,\u201d his attorney said. \u201cThere was no admission of liability, which is something they never do.\u201d<\/p>\n Barclays Center officials did not respond to emails or phone calls this week seeking comment.<\/p>\n Cramming them in<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to measure the human impact of falls in stadiums. There is no central database tracking how many sports fans or concertgoers are seriously injured or killed each year inside these quasi-public spaces.<\/p>\n The internet, though, is not suffering from a lack of examples.<\/p>\n In 2013, a football fan fell to his death<\/a> from a Candlestick Park walkway during a San Francisco 49ers game. Three years later in Denver, a spectator died after falling from a \u201csevere height\u201d<\/a> at Mile High Stadium.<\/p>\n In Pittsburgh in 2022, a Beaver County man died after falling from an escalator at Acrisure Stadium after a Steelers game.<\/p>\n Two recent Pittsburgh incidents have generated headlines.<\/p>\n On April 30, a Pittsburgh Pirates fan who had been drinking alcohol fell 21 feet from the Clemente Wall to the right-field warning track at PNC Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n The fan, Kavan Markwood, said he fell while celebrating an Andrew McCutchen double. Markwood called TribLive while still hospitalized and described his injured back and neck as \u201cbroken everything.\u201d<\/p>\n This past Saturday, a worker at Acrisure Stadium was hospitalized with severe injuries after falling about 50 feet<\/a> from the main scoreboard, according to Pittsburgh police.<\/p>\n Katie Sharpe knows the dangers of modern-day stadiums too well.<\/p>\n Her younger brother, Ronald Homer Jr., died after falling 85 feet from the upper deck of Turner Field in Atlanta in 2013<\/a>. A sports triple threat, Homer \u2014 who stood 6-foot-7 and played football, baseball and basketball in high school \u2014 regularly attended Atlanta Braves games.<\/p>\n After Homer\u2019s death, Sharpe said, she developed a \u201chorrible\u201d fear of heights. As she battled that, Sharpe also consulted with industry experts about her brother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cI looked through everything. I pulled autopsy reports, I looked at schematics,\u201d said Sharpe, 47, of Darien, Ga., a coastal town about an hour\u2019s drive north of Jacksonville, Fla. \u201cI mean, this was devastating for our family. He was just 30. <\/p>\n \u201cBut we didn\u2019t want to go and drag this all out, go through all these lawsuits and stuff,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Swint, the former engineer based in Houston, said it\u2019s unclear how stadium management responds to incidents like Monday\u2019s fall.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are design limitations when you\u2019re trying to get a massive amount of people into a small area,\u201d Swint said Wednesday. \u201cI think there\u2019s an issue here. There\u2019s no question about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Justin Vellucci is a TribLive reporter covering crime and public safety in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. A longtime freelance journalist and former reporter for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, he worked as a general assignment reporter at the Trib from 2006 to 2009 and returned in 2022. He can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Pittsburgher Fabian Carrazana, going to a hockey game or concert means braving the vertigo-inducing pitch of PPG…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-260659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}