County fairs review safety of fairground structures - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

The fun and games start this weekend at the Johnson County Fair in Franklin. But there's no fooling around with safety.

Brian Young with the Fair says the dry grass is "enough to start a fire." With this year's dangerous dry conditions, Johnson County is even banning smoking on its bone dry Franklin Fairgrounds.

Vigilance is up at fairs across the state, but because of something that happened months before the dangerous dry spell. The fatal State Fair stage rigging collapse eleven months ago sparked more aggressive safety inspections and got fairs thinking.

Johnson County brought in engineers to check their steel and aluminum structure.

"With this whole State Fair thing that happened, they came in, did some load testing, wind testing on those bleachers," Young said.

Engineers found "we were good north and south, as far as bracing goes, but east and west we lacked a little bit, needed more cross members braced in there."

Crews installed new steel bracing this week.

"All about safety," Young said.

Mark DiFabio with the Delaware County Fair says of the State Fair incident, "I hope people did learn from it. I know we did."

After State Fair, the Delaware County Fair Board looked at its rickety grandstand with cracked steel supports and rotted wood footings and said "we didn't want to sit there and worry about hindsight."

"We didn't want to sit there and say would have, should have, could have. We did it," DiFabio added.

They demolished the rotting, crumbling grandstand and replaced it with a $900,000 one, which was built on time and under budget.

"The tragedy has brought it to everybody's mind," said fair treasurer John Dorer.

"Feel a lot better about the new ones being safer," said fairgoer Kristi Billiter.

"A lot nicer than the wooden ones that they had," said Ginger Grove.

"Averts a tragedy, I guess," Todd Billiter said.