Collapsed construction crane removed from NYC street

NEW YORK (AP) – It may take weeks to determine why a huge construction crane that was being lowered during strong winds came crashing down onto a street, killing a pedestrian and crushing a row of parked cars, city officials said Saturday. The accident killed one person and injured three.

The mobile crane’s boom landed across an intersection, smashed several auto roofs and stretched much of a block after the accident at a historic building in lower Manhattan about 10 blocks north of the World Trade Center.

It will be broken into 35 separate pieces taken out on flatbed trucks to be examined further.

“It is not the equivalent of a black box”, Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler said.

Sparks were flying at the scene of the deadly crane collapse on worth street in Tribeca as crews used blow torches to carefully dismantle the 565-foot boom and find out exactly what caused it to come down.

Stringer painted a picture of crane safety that appeared to be at odds with the more sanguine view offered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said the company that operated the collapsed crane appeared to be following the rules to the letter.

The crane crashed as it was being lowered during strong winds.

“It is definitely concerning that something like this would happen”, said another.

“I’m not going to minimize what happened”.

“This is one of the largest boom lengths that has been erected in some time”, Chandler said.

In making his case, Stringer cited “at least four significant crane collapses” in the last 2-1/2 years.

That is exactly what the Department of Buildings is working on.

“City enforcement must do more than levy fines and increase the cost of doing business, it must actually make risky work sites into safe ones”, Brewer said in a statement. Officials said inspectors were deployed throughout the city to get it done.

“So that we can have a better understanding of how these accidents are investigated”, he said. It could take longer for the street to reopen as officials inspect it and fix damaged pavement, he said.

Instead, the 56-year-old operator lost his battle to control the crane and it collapsed.

“The main point is to cut them in locations that doesn’t compromise the forensic engineering value, so that we can have experts study how these pieces failed”, Chandler said. According to DOB officials, the crane’s computer records each movement, and could be the key to finding answers about the crash.

“So that crew – those construction workers, who, in the normal course of their work, as they were lowering the crane, were in fact keeping people away from the site and keeping traffic from proceeding down West Broadway”, de Blasio said.