Stage accident mars Monsters of Rock festival in Siberia

The stage at a sports stadium crashed down a few hours before the Monsters of Rock musical festival was due to start in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Russia’s Siberia , Interfax reports citing a festival organizer.

“The bulky musical and lighting equipment that all the participants have brought along must have been too heavy, and the metallic support beams just gave way,” workers who discovered the collapsed stage early morning June 20 told the agency.  

No casualties have been reported, but some music gear already installed on the stage has been substantially damaged. The show has been cancelled.

The show in Novosibirsk was to feature such world rock megastars as Alice Cooper, Scorpions, The Rasmus и Kingdom Comе.

The price of about 12 thousand tickets worth from one to eight thousand rubles ($32.00 to $256.00) that have been sold out will be reimbursed,  festival organizers are reported to promise.

Assessing damages resulting from the stage crash, the Monsters of the Rock festival organizers estimate them as reaching 20 million rubles (over 645 thousand dollars), Interfax news agency reports citing Yevgenia Bezsonova, a local producer company spokesperson.

The next show is scheduled to take place in another Siberian city, Krasnoyarsk. From there the festival participants are expected to proceed to Murmansk, in the extreme northwest part of Russia, then Volgograd on the Volga river, and wrap up the tour with a concert in Moscow on June 28, at the Olimpiysky sports complex.