Manchester

Chat about anything you like - within reason!
Happosai
Posts: 179
Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2001 1:38 pm

Re: Manchester

Post by Happosai »

Not been on here for over 2 years...!

I was at Manchester Arena when the bomb went off.

I work there as event crew and we were backstage waiting for the show to finish when it happened. I didn't actually hear it go off (loud bangs are not unusual there anyway, due to the use of pyrotechnics) and we started work taking down the show, not knowing what had happened. There had been a tannoy announcement telling the departing audience to leave calmly, and there was a girl in hysterics in the seats, but I put it down to over-excited young girls. It was a good 10 minutes later that we were told we had to evacuate and we passed armed response police as we left, so then knew that something wasn't right.

We went to the designated evacuation point but were immediately moved on to a place further away. There were a lot of upset and dazed people wandering around and emergency service vehicles arriving all the time, but we still had no idea what had occurred. Social media was just full of rumours and the local news hadn't any details yet. After an hour or so of waiting around, we were told we weren't going to be getting back in the building that night to retrieve our belongings and to go home.

I had to break into where I live due to having no keys and being unable to wake my housemate. It was only when I was home and put on the news that I found out what had actually happened.

We went back the following weekend to take down the show and retrieve our stuff. Although we couldn't see where it had actually happened, as that was on the concourse and we were on the venue floor, it was pretty eerie.

It was a surreal experience which did shake me a bit, but I was lucky not to have been more affected by it -- I have worked at the venue as an event steward a handful of times and have been on the exact position where it happened.

Security at the venue is now a lot tighter -- we have to go through a metal detector and bag search to get into the venue now.

My thoughts are with the people who were tragically affected.
User avatar
Crash
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Sep 09, 2002 8:16 pm
Location: EDF Moonbase
Contact:

Re: Manchester

Post by Crash »

Hi Happosai,
It's great to see you. I sometimes feel that I haven't been on here much in 2 years at all.
We've had some difficulty recently at work with a lot of our work being moved away to other countries (nothing to do with Brexit btw).
I've been working on a lot of other projects and when I recently went back to work on X-Bomber the Game, I immediately consumed all that time undoing a problem with the new editing software that I allowed to update itself.

So ... I feel as though I might be finding time before long to come back to X-Bomber and get my project finished in a big way.

Have you come across anything in your 2 years in terms of Star Fleet fan artwork or anything interesting that I should be adding to the site?
Is there anything that you'd like to see this forum and xbomber.co.uk doing that it doesn't do at the moment?
Dream big and bold and daring.
Post Reply