Seven people were injured on Wednesday when a crane at a construction site collapsed, the latest in a recent spate of crane collapses in New York City.
Three of those injured in the collapse had to be extricated from beneath the crane. The collapse happened around 2:30 p.m. The crane was at the site of a future residential complex near the East River waterfront. The first floor had been constructed and workers beginning to build its second floor were forced to scramble when the giant machine started to collapse.
Witnesses to the collapse say they heard a snap and then workers began screaming, “Run! Run!” as the crane came down on top of them.
The most serious injuries, according to an AP report from the scene, were suffered by people trapped beneath the collapsed crane. Those injuries included broken bones. No one’s injuries were believed to be life-threatening and there was no special equipment needed to remove those trapped beneath the crane.
There was no concrete poured at the building site. Construction workers had only managed to build a wood and metal skeleton of scaffold around the structure’s first floor. That all came crashing down when the crane cut through it. The crane was hoisted to about 200 feet just this past weekend to be ready for construction at the site. According to the AP report, the crane collapse was at the “site of a project for a 25-story apartment building under contract by TF Cornerstone, a residential and commercial real estate developer and property management company. The company said it was working with authorities to help determine what caused the crash.”
This is the latest crane collapse reported recently. Another recent collapse of a crane at a New York hotel following the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy stranded several foreign tourists and sat dangling over city streets for several days before it could be safely lowered to the ground.
The crane in this latest incident was leased by a subcontractor at the construction site from the company, New York Crane and Equipment Corp. This is the same company that owned cranes involved in two crane collapses in 2008 in New York City, incidents which claimed nine lives, AP reports. The source also reports that one person was killed in April when a crane collapsed at the construction site of a new subway line.
