Reacting to Tragedy at the Atlanta Braves Game

View of Press box area at Turner Field as it was in 2010. Reports say the fan who fell passed in front of the radio booths on the left of the picture Please credit Photo by Fred Owens

In the seventh inning of Saturday night’s Atlanta Braves game Saturday night, a fan fell from the upper deck behind home plate to his death.  The game continued and many want to know why. I’ll try to explain.

 The Incident

In the top of the seventh inning the Yankees sent Alex Rodriguez up to pinch hit for the pitcher. The Braves decided to walk Rodriguez and fans rose to boo the choice and generally make their feelings known.  At that point a fan fell from the upper (400) level down to the second (200) level. Fox commentator Justin Kutcher saw the man fall and mentioned it on air.  The game continued without interruption as first fans then paramedics before they eventually carried the man out to take him to hospital.

"Sgt. Greg Lyon with Atlanta police said, “Yes. A fan has fallen and his condition is grave. We are investigating the circumstances of the fall, and I will keep you posted as I learn more.”"

About 11p.m. eastern time we were told that the man had passed away.

UPDATE 8/30/15 10:31 EST

Why didn’t the game stop?

Before I go farther let me establish my expertise in this. I spent 28 years as an Air Force  firefighter, the last 10 as a fire chief.  My duties included acting as on-scene commander during emergency responses, not just for fire fighters but for the entire incident.  I controlled entry, security and directed control of crowds, assisted medical personnel to set up and manage triage points and evacuate patients.

The short answer to why the game wasn’t stopped is that there was no reason to stop it and nothing to be gained by stopping it. In fact stopping the game could easily have made the situation worse.

There were 49,243 fans at the Atlanta Braves game last night and less than 10% knew anything happened until well after the victim was on his way to hospital. Stopping the game would have required a public address announcement and drawn attention to the incident and the emergency responders dealing with it.

The concourses would have bee crowded by people who didn’t want to get in the way but just have a look. They would have been in the way during removal of the victim. Some fans might have decided to leave the game at that point increasing traffic congestion. While the responders could have dealt with those things they would have been additional unnecessary issues to be dealt with requiring more time and manpower.

There’s nothing hard-hearted or unfeeling about it, by keeping the game going they kept fans in the seats and out of the way. In fact Kutcher shouldn’t have said a word on air about it. By announcing it he generated tweets, texts and phone calls from people at home to people at the game. This isn’t a shot at Kutcher, he’s not not a newsman. He simply reacted to the horrible thing he saw but it wasn’t an ideal thing to happen.

That’s A Wrap

It’s been my duty to be in charge of loss of life incidents including two major air show crashes. Both landing points were removed form the center of the crowds point of view although one was a mid-air collision.

In both instances we kept the air displays going on and the air display announcer didn’t make announcements about the incidents. Although there were 240,000 people watching the show, most had no idea what happened until they went home.

While the emotional response is that everyone should stop out of respect for the victim the practical answer is that unless absolutely necessary, the game should go on. The fewer untrained people emergency responders have trying to help, the better off the are.

Tweeting pictures of the blood stained landing site was in my personal opinion a bad choice. There was no news there, no information gained from the pictures and no good came from viewing them.

The thoughts and prayers of everyone here at the Take go out to the fan, his family and those around the incident whose lives were changed forever by what they saw.