A defective bracket is likely to blame for dropping a tower-hung speaker 25 metres down into the stands at Tim Hortons Field, a city inspection suggests.
The city closed access to Tim Hortons Field for a safety probe Monday after a speaker the size of a bar fridge crashed into the upper stands on the east side of the new $145 million stadium.
No one was injured, but a contractor started removing other suspended speakers as a precaution Wednesday and the city hired a third-party inspector to probe the incident and safety-check other equipment.
“It appears to be have been a bracket failure, a defect,” said facilities head Rom D’Angelo, who added a staff team will confirm the analysis after looking at the final inspection report and design drawings Friday.
The safety inspection and speaker removal was cut short Wednesday, however, because of increasingly high winds. A boom truck was being used to help workers reach the light standards towering above the stadium.
That means workers will race the clock to inspect and remove up to five more speakers Friday, with weekend events including a Hamilton Tiger-Cats open house on the bubble.
D’Angelo said he hopes to know by late Friday afternoon if the stadium can be reopened for the weekend.
The original contractors on the job, Ontario Sports Solutions and audio equipment installer AV Solutions, arranged for workers to remove the speakers and take photos of the “as-found condition” of the various brackets and mounting devices.
The city has independently hired a third-party audio consultant to “act as another pair of eyes” on the inspection and work, D’Angelo said.
He couldn’t say yet how much the work and inspection will cost — or even who will pay the final bill. “That’s something we’ll have to sort out later,” he said.
The city, Tiger-Cats, Ontario Sports Solutions and Infrastructure Ontario are already wrangling in court over who is to blame for infamous stadium construction delays and building deficiencies.
The city, team and provincial agency have also listed multimillion claims for damages — but all also maintain behind-the-scenes negotiations continue to settle the dispute out of court.
