TriBeCa crane collapse investigation focuses on weather, height, operating company
By Jim Hoffer
Updated 2 mins ago
TRIBECA (WABC) -- The investigation into the deadly crane collapse in TriBeCa Friday morning is focusing on the wind and the height of the crane, as well as the company operating the vehicle.
Overnight, the crane's boom was extended more than 500 feet. But as winds picked up, workers rushed in to lower it. During that process, the boom got caught by the winds, which blew the entire structure over.
Now, there will be serious questions about why the massive boom was left fully extended overnight with a storm coming. Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler said the crane's last on-site inspection took place Thursday morning.
"The boom length for this unit was 565 feet," he said. "That is a very large crane, and it was approved and submitted by an engineer."
The crane is owned by Bay Crane, of Long Island City, Queens, which has a fairly good safety record. Last year, however, a Bay Crane was involved in an accident on Madison Avenue in which cables broke while lifting a massive air conditioning unit. Ten people were injured.
Additionally, in 2010, a Bay Crane had a mechanical problem that caused it to crash against a building in Lower Manhattan. Fortunately, there were no injuries in that case.
In this accident, the Bay Crane was being leased and operated by Galasso Trucking and Rigging, of Maspeth.
"It has a capacity of 330 tons, a very, very large crane," Chandler said. "Perfectly fine the terms of the way it was engineered, but obviously requires an investigation as to why this happened."
One person was killed and three others injured when the crane came down just before 8:30 a.m. at Worth and Church streets, clipping at least one building and landing on a row of parked cars.
New York City is in the midst of huge building boom, with more cranes operating in Manhattan alone than any city in the nation. This accident raises the question once again as to whether the city has enough inspectors to keep an eye on all these cranes.
More than 300 are operating every day city-wide, but as of last year, the city buildings department had about 32 inspectors on the books.