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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s decision to essentially police
itself as it investigates a fatal stage collapse at the state fair
is raising questions about how objective the probe will
be.
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Workplace safety agencies, state police and fair officials are
looking into Saturday’s collapse that killed five people and
injured dozens more. All are under the jurisdiction of the state,
which also put on the fair. The lone outside agency brought in so
far is an engineering firm hired by the Indiana State Fair
Commission, raising questions about its independence.
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Other states in similar positions have formed special commissions
with outside experts to handle investigations, including of a
bonfire collapse at Texas A&M University and the Columbine High
School shootings in Colorado. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels so far
hasn’t mentioned the idea, and instead has repeatedly referred to
the wind gust that toppled the stage but spared other nearby
structures as a freak occurrence that couldn’t have been
anticipated.
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“The fair has an interest in protecting itself,” attorney Jerry
Miniard of Erlanger, Ky., who is representing an injured girl, said
Thursday. “Why in the world would you let someone who may be
responsible investigate themselves?”
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Miniard said he is a friend of the father of 10-year-old Jade
Walcott, whose skull was crushed by the falling stage. He
questioned how thorough the probe will be given that it’s nearly
all being done in-house.
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“The state of Indiana is basically investigating itself,” he
said.
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Judy Nadler, a former mayor of Santa Clara, Calif., who is a senior
fellow in government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied
Ethics at Santa Clara University, said that could be a
mistake.
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“There’s this sort of automatic default to say, we have people here
internally who can take a look at this … but for something so
closely affiliated with the state, it would be wise to call upon
someone who doesn’t have any even perceived conflict of interest,”
Nadler said. She suggested bringing in someone from outside the
state, perhaps even an outside regulator.
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“I think it really is such a significant event … it requires a
level of independence to fully discern the facts and to fully
convey to the public that this was a fair and thorough and
impartial and nonpolitical look at what happened,” she
said.
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State fair officials did announce this week that they had hired New
York engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti Inc. to review the stage’s
design and construction, but Miniard questioned how far-ranging
that probe might be since the state will determine the scope of the
investigation.
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“The state of Indiana is in complete control over the
investigation,” Miniard said. “And the state’s interests are
possibly different than those people who were injured or
killed.”
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Fair spokesman Andy Klotz said the Indiana Occupational Safety and
Health Administration and other agencies conducting their own
investigations will all report to the fair commission. “I am quite
sure that everybody is going to be satisfied with the thoroughness
of this investigation,” he said. “And nobody wants the answers more
than us.”
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Attention also has centered on how fair officials reacted to
worsening weather conditions, telling the audience minutes before a
60 to 70 mph wind gust brought the stage down onto the crowd that
the show would likely go on – without mentioning that the National
Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning. But it
isn’t clear which, if any, agency was investigating that aspect of
the crisis.
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“I don’t know who that falls under, but absolutely, that’s going to
be part of it,” Klotz said.
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In other states and even in Indiana, officials sometimes have
avoided any appearance of conflict of interest by bringing in
outside investigators.
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After a 1999 bonfire collapse that killed 12 people at Texas
A&M University, school officials appointed a five-person
commission whose members had no direct ties to the university to
investigate the tragedy. The University of Notre Dame conducted its
own investigation into the death of a student killed last year when
the hydraulic lift he was on fell over in high winds as he filmed
football practice. But it hired Peter Likins, an engineer and the
former president of the University of Arizona, to provide an
independent review of its investigation.
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Others have gone even further. After an explosion killed 29 men
last year in the Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, W.Va., the
state’s governor asked a former top federal mine regulator to
investigate the accident. And Colorado’s governor appointed an
independent commission to investigate the 1999 Columbine High
School shootings.
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A spokeswoman for Daniels didn’t immediately return phone calls
about whether he had considered such an option.
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Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los
Angeles, said there was ultimately no way to avoid outside
investigations of an accident like the state fair stage collapse
because there were bound to be lawsuits by victims and their
families.
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“In a sense, the lawsuit is the outside investigation,” Stern
said.
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Miniard said he was sending a letter to Daniels asking him to issue
an executive order securing the stage so that the victims can
conduct their own investigations into the accident, though he said
it was too early to gauge the likelihood of a lawsuit without a
better understanding of what happened.
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In other cases, he said, families have had to seek restraining
orders to compel officials to preserve evidence. Miniard said he
had called and written to state police, the state fire marshal and
fair officials with his request and received no
response.
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—
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Associated Press writer Dan Sewell in Cincinnati contributed to
this report.
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