Posted on 06/01/2015 6:31:56 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
A massive air-conditioning unit being lifted by a crane to the top of a midtown Manhattan office building broke free Sunday, fell 28 stories and landed in the middle of Madison Avenue, injuring 10 people.
Two were construction workers, while the others were pedestrians and occupants of passing cars. All were struck by debris that caused minor injuries.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxny.com ...
Allowing yourself to be in a situation where one (or even two) straps breaking will cause disaster is negligence, not accident.
When hauling a heavy object over a public street, there should be sufficient redundancy that multiple straps would have to break, plus sufficient quality control that frayed or worn straps get replaced BEFORE they break.
Holy Crap!
..fixed.
I was involved in installing a new Cooling tower on top of the N.Y.Times Bldg.When the crane set up on the street the operators wanted to place the crane across the street ,Half on the street and half on a drive between two Bldgs instead of where the permit directed it to be placed.
An operator of the building came out screaming, and made the rigger put the crane back on the street. They had put the crane over a vault which might have collapsed.
The crane was 350’ long and would have fallen out on Broadway if it fell. Pulling the load Horizontally was performed with success, but I think that is the most dangerous method of placing the equipment. Too many Stresses on the men and Equipment especially with a long boom. A Recipe for Disaster. Our job worked out well but it was very stressful.
Geeze, my house has a 5 ton air conditioner. It would never do that amount of damage, even if dropped from that high.
“Its bad luck to go under large cranes.”
It’s worse luck to go under then when they’re dropping large air conditioners.
Does anyone have more information about this?
“deBlasio showed up”
Is it normal for a mayor to show up at an industrial accident scene? Especially since no one was killed? Kinda sounds like damage control to me. A couple of weeks ago a 15k lb. section of highway sound deadening wall fell on a guy on site where I am, our mayor didn’t show up and this guy was killed instantly.....just seems a little weird to me.
Gotta give guys like you and others who do this sort of work credit for your nerves of steel. Imagine where we would be today if all the men in the country were like Obama's little "Pajama Boy"?
Yeah, we call ‘em rigroes. :)
“Geeze, my house has a 5 ton air conditioner. It would never do that amount of damage, even if dropped from that high.”
You probably mean your house has a 5 ton rated AC unit which means it could remove the same heat as 5 tons of ice every 24 hours. Your unit probably weighs in about 150 pounds.
The AC Unit they were picking was probably a chilled water system weighing in 5 tons. Much larger.
Straps fail
Crane booms fail
Chains fail
Motors fail
Brakes fail
Cable wire fails
However the biggest fail here was the stupid idot that didnt control the space beneath the lift. Who was the dumb site controlled that allowed people beneath a lift like that.
Still, I would not want to try to catch 150 lbs dropped from 300’ up.
Responding to Post #18.
Spot on with Chinese Quality certs and validation stuff. I had heard grumblings about the sort of things you speak of for years. There is actually a LOT of truth to it. For the past year I have had access to reports for my company’s construction efforts in China. We have a firm dedicated to quality control independent of all contractors and government. The defects (fraud) that they discover would be laughable if some of them were not so serious. I don’t think there is an honest tape measure or scale in China. It worries the hell out of our facilities folks. What are we not catching?
I wouldn't want to try to catch 1 POUND falling from that height!!!
time to “call Gary”
Thanks be to God for the “minor injuries”. It could have been a number of deaths.
Air conditioning is a major cause of global warming.
He’s just a good global citizen doing his bit to fight climate change.
As ridiculous as Mayor Wilhelm is, this can’t be blamed on him or the democrats. It’s just an accident.
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