Sunday, March 16, 2008

The New York Crane accident

It was a sad day in construction when this crane gave way killing four workers. I've worked on thousands of construction sites over the years and I must say I don't think I would have stayed on this one very long. They had 13 violations in 27 months. That's one every other month. I've always been a bit leary of cranes and always make sure I know where the boom is before moving ahead. Always look for an escape route or good cover when working around these guys. This somewhat surprises me in that most cranes and scaffolding have multiple ancor points with back up safety features. I can't speak that much about cranes but I know with scaffolds I'll take some time to check connections and the general stability of the structure and if anything's wrong I get out the ratchet set and tighten connections.
Just a few redundant ancors in this situation and four guys might be alive. Maybe the crane company will learn from this mistake maybe not I sure hope they do.

Crane in NY

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