OK,.... a search of topic found this thread. And it is dead-on to my tale from this past weekend, in regard to safety precautions!
In this image, you can see the camera that is closest to my Dummy Head rig, and extension/clamp rig.
In setting that camera up, the videographer swung his tripod a bit getting it into position. In doing that, the entire base piece at the top of the tripod, that the camera mounts to; it also acts as the panning swivel..... I don't know what its called. It was everything from the top of the legs, to the underside of the camera. That piece fell off of the tripod, from a couple of feet above the balcony edge. It fell down, and hit squarely on the top of the rail, which is pitched sharply to fall off away from the balcony seating side, and it slopes as if to fall into the crowd below.
That piece of the camera tripod is quite heavy; I picked it up to hand it back to the vid guy, as it bounced towards my side of our gear. It landed squarely at the top of the wall, a triangular feature, and dented it pretty deeply. It then teetered for a second, before falling at our feet.
If it had fallen the other way, it was a good 20' to the seats below. I don't know if anyone was sitting there yet, as this was a good 45 minutes before show time. But, there were musicians milling about, their parents, tech staff, etc., already in the hall. This thing would have maimed or killed someone directly below it.