Supervisors hear details of harrowing tent collapse
| Tuesday, Dec 15 2009 11:58 AM
Last Updated Tuesday, Dec 15 2009 12:00 PM
Stuart Witt saw the front corner of the football field-sized tent lift off, fly 3 feet into the air and set itself back down. He watched it happen again.
Witt picked up his radio.
The SpaceShip 2 after-party was over.
Inside the tent on Dec. 7, about 1,000 celebrities, sheiks, princesses and international dignitaries were enjoying the vodka bar, the million dollar telescope and the afterglow of the unveiling of the world's first commercial spaceship.
"There were 300 seats labeled 'future astronaut,'" Supervisor Jon McQuiston said. "Most of them were filled."
But Witt didn't like the look of the wind.
"When I made the call it was calm," he said. "People probably thought I was from outer space."
But Witt had been tracking the wind all week in preparation for the party. He knew two jet streams were in play.
He knew the tent was rated for 70-knot winds and had no shielding from the north.
"We had pre-briefed with this scenario," Witt said.
He made the call to kill the party four hours early.
The wind shifted, roaring violently across the spaceport.
Kern County sheriff's deputies, Kern County firefighters and California Highway Patrol officers moved into the party as a public address system announced the evacuation.
Kern County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Cody was on the scene and said the evacuation was orderly and safe.
"When the gentlemen with guns say you need to get out, people get the picture," he said.
But Witt said Cody had to fall back on his days as a lineman for the Bakersfield College Renegades to convince one gentleman to annul his marriage to the vodka bar.
The tent was evacuated in six minutes, but people continued to try to get back into the structure.
Most had their wallets, purses and passports in the coat-check area and were frantic to get to them.
They were turned away.
Caterers and other event staff - including the people handling the $1 million telescope - were more forceful in their requests to return to the site, said Ed Smith with the CHP.
But they were turned away.
Witt listened as emergency workers called in the all clear, section by section, as the wind rose.
Smaller inflatable tents, restrooms and kitchens were cleared.
Emergency staffers worked methodically. They had a good game plan and they ran it. Smith said.
But the wind was still rising.
Smith and Kern County fire Captain Don Napier remember standing in the large tent after the building was cleared.
Smith said golf-ball sized stones were being thrown against the building's thick plastic skin by the wind.
But they got the sense it might be better to risk the rocks, Smith said.
They got out.
As the dignitary-filled buses rolled away from the event, the wind did what Witt had worried it would.
At 7:36 p.m. the wind peeled the tent like an orange and sent the steel structure crashing onto the inflatable buildings next to it.
"I believe there are people living today because of the decisions made that night," McQuiston said.
If Witt hadn't made his call, said Kern County Fire Chief Nick Dunn, there would have been death and destruction.
Kern County would have been on the international news talking about what went wrong, instead of what went right.
Witt downplayed the importance of his decision, instead pointing to good emergency planning and the work of safety personnel.
"These guys went into harm's way for the safety of the general public," he said. "I have no problem writing a check to the county for the service I received."
