Monday, April 18, 2011

Here's What ND Learned From Investigation...


The University of Notre Dame outlined its findings this morning from a nearly six-month investigation of the Declan Sullivan tragedy.  Here are the key points stressed in this conference:
  1. The weather was last checked by the ND staff at 2:46 PM ET on October 27th -- the eighth time they had checked the wind that day -- prior to practice
  2. The scissors lift blew over at 4:54 PM ET
  3. The wind gust that blew the scissors lift over was estimated as a 53 mph wind gust
The major finding was this -- the data that Notre Dame was looking at online regarding weather -- was updated every hour at approximately 54 minutes after the hour.  Thus, when the football staff was last looking at a weather update at 2:46 PM ET -- they were looking at a weather report from actually 1:54 PM ET.  If, the ND staff had checked the weather reports at approximately 2:55 PM ET instead of 2:46 PM ET -- they would have seen wind gusts exceeding 35 mph -- and probably would have lowered the scissors lifts at practice.

A sad day for the Sullivan family and the Notre Dame family.

Here's a link to the University of Notre Dame's report:  DECLAN SULLIVAN TRAGEDY FINDINGS