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NEW YORK -- A crane collapsed at a New York City construction site Wednesday, injuring seven workers, authorities said.
Officials said the mobile crane unit collapsed shortly before 2:30 p.m. The construction site is behind the famed Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City, Queens.
Three construction workers were trapped under the crane and had to be extricated, an FDNY deputy chief on the scene said. The most seriously injured suffered broken bones.
'Everybody started running'
Carpenter Preston White said he was standing on scaffolding about 20 feet from the ground with some colleagues when the cable on the crane snapped while moving a stack of wood.
"You could hear the cable snap, and it recoiled back toward the crane," said White. "Everybody started running out of that way because that was all that was coming, the cable. And you heard a snap, and the next thing you know, the crane just buckled and it came crashing down."
"You could hear people screaming," he said. "You could hear people calling out, trying to find people. I was surprised I was still on the deck."
A 25-story residential building is being built on the site by developer TF Cornerstone.
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Matthew Knell, who lives across from the construction site, said he "heard a big bang."
Randall Todd said he was walking his dogs nearby when he heard the sound of what he described as breaking metal.
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He looked over and saw "the top horizontal arm of the crane dropping, but it folded on itself, accordion-style, including the vertical tower, which seemed to snap in half."
The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear.
In a statement, TF Cornerstone said: "Site safety is always our first priority as it relates to construction, and we are cooperating fully with all relevant authorities to try and determine what caused this occurrence."
The work at the site was being carried out by subcontractor Cross Country Construction. The crane had been leased to Cross Country Construction by New York Crane.
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Leave a Comment:
Another crane collapse another dollar.
Yeah, what is up in NYC? Not much for crane safety.
Not much for safety because they all skimp on maintenance now. Cut cost! Lay off the man that inspects the equipment.
NYC has a major crane collapse about every month don't they ? We need another gubmint program. Crane inspectors who inspect the crane inspections by the already existing crane inspectors who already double check the owner/operators's maintenance crews and their inspections. Then we can give immunity to the owners/operators and the long line of gubmint inspectors so the future collapses don't result in lawsuits. So we can have dead and injured but nobody gets sued and we can have a lot more gubmint employees to satimulate the economy. Yes, I think this is what we need.
OMG!! Ban cranes!! No one needs more than one crane! Oooooo the humanity!
Story By Pei-Sze Cheng and Jonathan Dienst, NBCNewYork.com
Hmmmmm. C'mon guys...... We'll all give you one guess before we tell you clearly what happennnnned!
Cables cost money, apparently it's cheaper to wait until they break before replacing.
Chances are the crane owner has no idea what stresses the crane has been subjected to and they just keep re-leasing it. Overtime individual strands of the cable break until it's too weak to handle the load.
Accordion.
Ah, someone else finally noticed. Fixed.
Ban these dangerous weapons now! Crane violence has gone on too long! How many innocents must be injured before the government steps in and outlaws these killing machines??
I knew that as soon as I clicked on this comment section that some stupid idiotic moron would make this same tired, unoriginal, unfunny post. jpooch go fry ice and get a life
I knew that as soon as I seen the "ban cranes" comment, some left wing, anti-freedom, product of the state, would be offended and make a crass comment.
I just thought it was a funny joke.
It never occurred to me that it was a code phrase to highlight the fact that Bush and Obama are conspiring to get assault rifles banned to secretly increase global warming.
yeah, anti freedom, you are free to go stuff yourself
Crazy!!
More like another gun nut who doesn't know the difference between a weapon that is designed, manufactured, and sold with the intent to kill and... any other object on the planet. I don't even think pictures will help explain the difference to them. "Anti-freedom"?? More like "anti-violence against innocent people".
Jacob, Sam,
They will continue as long as when you read about a shooting and the comments immediately are BAN GUNS, It's the NRA's fault stuff.
That said, "BAN CRANES" and have a nice day...
Do cranes collapse anywhere but NYC?
No
Yes they do. They just don't get the headlines that those in NYC do.
Why do you never hear about inspectors losing their jobs for not properly inspecting the installation? Condition of equipment?
Just the ones made with inferior Chinese steel.
OSHA ? Where ya at ? Ah....busy cutting peoples extension cords and taking away there ladders.
OSHA is suffering budget cuts. However, companies are always free to do their own self safety inspections
It's not OSHA's job to inspect equipment. It's OSHA's job to make sure workers use equipment safety. It's the companies job to inspect their own equipment and keep records but they all want more deregulation.
Larry ...is that right ? So how do explain OSHA laying down crazy fines for a guy who has drill without a ground post? Don't you tell me they don't inspect equipment......I will tell you you're wrong.
Lori: I'd be OK with not having millions of gubmint employees inspecting things but not making things safer. Make the owners/operators carry insurance and or bonds on a per jopb basis. Sue and fine the ones doing it wrong and hurting people. Let the ones doing it right collect their profits. In the US we want to stop injured people from suing, but we have no other method to control safety or assure wrong doers take care of the ones they harm. More gubmint employees is not the answer.
I believe the engineers that design are undereducated! While working I had the luxury of seeing the first vaccuum cleaners that were imported from China. An engineer boasted how the roller would last a lifetime. Of COURSE it would. The roller did not touch the carpet! If this is an example of our genius engineers then this certainly explains the poorly designed crane!
Engineers are a joke. I confronted one once regarding why the equipment he specked for the job was incompatible and would not work...he told me it wasn't his concern, that his only responsibility was to get us a permit, and then he said,"That's a field problem, babe." Must have been coked up.
Another cheap Chinese repair job.
Actually this sounds more like a bad wire rope than any kind of repair job. If the rope snaps, the tension released causes it to whip back and forth throughout the crane structure, destroying everything in its path. The crane structure is designed for static compression loads, not for steel wires flailing into it from every direction at supersonic velocities. There's no feasible way to design for that - the crane structure just gets sliced to bits.
A snapped wire rope is the nightmare scenario for crane operators and engineers. That's why we put safety factors on the ropes of 3-5. That means the rope should be strong enough to hold 3-5 times the maximum force it's ever expected to see. And that safety factor gets even higher if the crane is meant to lift people. The only thing that would cause a rope to snap before the rest of the crane is preexisting damage, which can always be caught be pre-use inspection.
And yes, I work with cranes for a living.
You can't install an inner steel tube or housing for the cable, inside the crane structure? That would limit the movement and velocity of the cable when it snaps, plus protect the structure from damage.
You can, sure, and some cranes have that, but they're more to keep the rope from jumping out of its sheaves and spilling everywhere during normal operation than to prevent damage in case of catastrophic failure. They'd slice like an orange peel if the rope ever snapped. What's more, you have to make sure they stay greased, too, to prevent damaging the rope (and thus making the crane more unsafe) in case it starts rubbing up against the tube wall.
The energy stored in these wire ropes is just mind-boggling. They're made of super-high strength steel. The fact that they're a bundle of thin wires as opposed to a solid piece allows the steel to be heat-treated with processes that would turn any plate or pipe steel brittle and unusable. When you load them, it's like stretching a kilometer-long rubber band made of, I don't know, a lightsaber. When it snaps, it slices steel like butter. A little tube isn't going to even slow it down.
If guns are the problem,how do you explain approximately 210 million adults,with at least 200 million guns,and yet only 11,000 gun deaths annually.An astonishingly low ..00055%(less than 1 tenth of 1%).why aren't the streets running in blood?If guns are the problem,shouldn't the bodies be stacked like cordwood?Come on folks,guns are not and never were a problem,The problem is an uninformed gullible electorite,dazzled by the spectcular,and led blindly into an obediant submission,the real aim our your leaders,and the real problem here.
Subcontracter!
Ban Cranes
Ethics are SSSOOOOOOOO critical--don't let anyone, ANYONE talk you into taking dangerous shortcuts! Or into re installing a worn out gasket, piece of equipment, etc. Safety first!
And the NRA/Gun Wingnuts response, "GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, CRANES DO!"
why isn't there an investigation into all these crane failures?
Wow, another one! What gives with not only this crane but all the others all over the world that have collapsed recently.
If its not cranes collapsing its ships sinking, oil spills that seem to follow, or ships hitting piers, airplane crashes and or problems with airplanes that the manufactures deem "small" and are normal until those same airplanes start falling from the sky!
Used to be that bad things seemed to happen in threes and maybe its just because of the internet and the news being shared all over the world but now every time something bad happens (like this accident) I fear what it seems to bring with it, the following or more of the same type of events within a short period of time and with it usually brings major injury or death to the people around them or using them..
Weird coincidence maybe? I really have no clue honestly but I sure wish that when things like this happen it would at least make the people responsible for the maintenance of these machines elsewhere think about double checking there own machines just to make sure there in tip top shape and also being used properly!
Maybe if all maintenance of these machines were the companies top priority without regards to the costs involved then these accidents might diminish or cease all together, but alas I know I am just using common sense and heaven forbid that any company think with their brains instead of there bank accounts.
At least this time it seems that people were only injured and no one lost their life (at this point at least) hopefully all the people injured recover fully and lastly if there is fault found with the owners of these machines due to poor maintenance or there carelessness/use etc then I hope they are jailed and or fined out of business at the very least before another so called accident happens and takes someone life.
Buildings, machines etc can be replaced but a life cannot be restored due to reckless abandon of their duties to properly maintain these machines/equipment.
The only winners in all of this are always the lawyers and I myself would love to see that end if you get my drift.
I was thinking this was the crane that got damaged during Hurricane Sandy.
Well OF COURSE they started running, they were trying not to die. Duh.