Video: Cheap Trick members narrowly avoid injury or death when stage collapses

Seventies rockers Cheap Trick narrowly avoided potential injury or death by leaving the stage at the Ottawa Bluesfest just moments before it collapsed during a violent storm tonight.

One man was seriously injured in the collapse when a piece of stage pierced his abdomen. At least four others were treated at the site, two of them taken to hospital with chest and neck injuries.

Cheap Trick was about 20 minutes into its performance before it left the stage. The band posted a message on its Facebook profile later in the evening: "We are SOOOO lucky! Everyone is shaken up but band and crew are all fine. CHEAP TRICK hopes that everyone who attended the show is also OK."

Lead vocalist Robin Zander later added, "Fortunately the band and crew are all lucky to be alive and we'll see you down the road. And all the best to our truck driver Sandy." Band manager Dave Frey told CNN "one of our drivers will spend the night in the hospital."

Concertgoer Ryan MacDonald, an editor at the Globe and Mail, described the scene. “Suddenly the wind whipped up from the west and the storm rolled in. It was a scary moment. People started screaming and crying. The stage was a rectangle and it had scaffolding, three, four storeys high. The wind caught it and blew it backwards. It collapsed like a big tent. It was kind of unreal.”

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