Fatal NYC Crane Accident Leads to Calls for Increased Safety

Example of a Crawler Crane (Photo via Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain)
Example of a Crawler Crane (Photo via Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain)

When a 600-foot crane toppled in high winds in downtown Manhattan earlier this month — killing a 38-year-old pedestrian and injuring three others — the call for improved crane safety was immediate and sustained.

Within hours of the Feb. 7 accident, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered that all 376 crawler cranes and 53 larger tower cranes being used in the city be secured against wind gusts.

The mayor also ordered new restrictions on crawler cranes, including added sidewalk protections and notification procedures, as well as the creation of a new task force to study existing crane safety standards and make recommendations for improvements.

Crawler cranes have tracks, like a military tank. Mobile cranes have wheels.

High Wind Warnings

According to the new restrictions, crawler cranes “must cease operation and go into safety mode whenever steady winds are forecast to exceed 20 miles per hour or gusts are forecast exceed 30 miles per hour,” deBlasio said.

The fatal crane accident, which was caught on video by workers in a nearby office tower, occurred about 8:25 a.m. Friday, Feb. 7, just as many New Yorkers were making to work in buildings near the construction site on Worth  Street near Church Street in the Tribeca neighborhood.

The crawler crane landed on several people, including David Wichs, a Harvard-educated mathematician, killing him.

Left a Swath of Destruction in Its Wake

The crane also struck several buildings on Worth Street as it crashed to the ground. Its enormous hook crashed into an office of the New York Law School. More than 140 firefighters rushed to the scene, joining several bystanders who jumped in to help victims of the crash.

The cause of the crane collapse is still being investigated. Construction experts have said that the particular type of crane –which has a boom that measures 565 feet long — is devilishly tricky to lower.

The cranes operator — Kevin Reilly, 56 — has three prior driving while intoxicated arrests from the 1980s, but submitted to a Breathalyzer test after the accident, which he passed, police said.

An inspector from the New York City buildings department had inspected the work site the morning before the crash and found nothing wrong.

Workers Respond Too Late

On the morning of the crash, high winds were blowing through the concrete canyons of Manhattan. When construction workers arrived on the job, they immediately determined that the crane needed to be secured and had just begun the process of securing the crane, but it was too late. The crane had already started its descent, crashing down onto the crowded city street.

According to the new crane restrictions, if there is a forecast for high winds the next work day, crawler crane operators must secure the cranes the day before. Failure to comply with the new rules could result in hefty fines.

“We’ll send advisories to crane engineers when wind conditions warrant it, and engineers will be required to certify that they will indeed cease operations,” said de Blasio in a news conference after the accident. “If we don’t receive this certification, we will be issuing violations and we will raise the base penalty for failure to safeguard a site from the current $4,800 dollars to $10,000.”

 

 

 

 

Crawler cranes have tracks, like a military tank. Mobile cranes have wheels.