Crane Topples in Midtown Manhattan

[DogPoundPup]

Source: AP - New York Times

A large crane at a construction site on Manhattan’s East Side collapsed Saturday afternoon, killing at least two people, officials said.The big, white crane, which looked to be at least 15 stories tall, appeared to have toppled across a street and crashed into other nearby buildings.
The accident happened on 51st Street near 2nd Avenue not long after 2 p.m.

Callers to New York 1 television said the crane was on 51st Street between First and Second Avenues. A man who identified himself as Bartle Bull told the television station that a bar called Fubar appeared to have been leveled by the crane accident.

Another caller, who identified himself as Joe DiBernardo, said he saw the crane collapse from his apartment on the 39th floor of a nearby apartment building. “The crane was actually separating from the building,” he said, “and falling slowly.” He added that the top of the crane came off almost like “a projectile.”

Rescue crews were on the scene and witnesses were reporting a strong smell of gas in the area, The A.P. sai





Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/nyregion/15cnd-crane.html?ex=1363320000&en=51b0b70ffc6be65a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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More deaths and injuries have been reported than just the two described here.

[lonestarnot]

1. Oh shit!

That is terrible. Brother does that, but wasn't his.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. That's horrible!

Sending out good thoughts to the isle of Manhattan.

[raincity_calling]

3. Similar thing happened in

Bellevue, WA (just across lake from Seattle) a couple of years ago. A guy sitting in his condo was killed.

[Stuckinthebush]

4. Ironic

The bar destroyed was called Fubar.

[Javaman]

8. Impossible to write stuff like that...

If you wrote a fictional story about a bar named fubar that gets crushed, people would through it in the trash.

[truthisfreedom]

5. Wow, what a horrible disaster!

Now I'm going to look at those cranes with a lot more suspicion. From the damage in those pictures, I expect the casualty count will jump soon... how terrible.

[billyoc]

6. I just walked over there, it's a mess. I'm an Ironworker, and I fear that

the four deaths were from the Ironworker crew jumping the crane. Almost nobody else works on Saturday in that neighborhood, the permits are too difficult to get. This is very bad. :(

[Blue_Tires]

7. how does a crane collapse?

picked up too heavy a load?

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. "bar called Fubar appeared to have been leveled by the crane accident"

Well, that certainly borders on asking for it...

[gristy]

10. Crane Collapse in Manhattan Kills at Least 4

Source: NY Times



A crane towering over a high-rise construction site on the East Side of Manhattan collapsed in a roar of rending steel Saturday afternoon, raining death and destruction across a city block as it slashed down on an apartment building, broke into sections, crushed a town house and cut away a tenement facade.

At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured, and damage was expected to run into the millions in what the authorities called one of the city’s worst accidents — a calamity that turned a neighborhood near the United Nations into a zone of panic, pulverized buildings, wailing sirens, searches in the rubble and covered bodies in the streets.

Many residents of the neighborhood around the site of the collapse — 51st Street between Second and First Avenues — said they had been worried for months about the possibility of a collapse, calling the crane, looming higher each week, a menace, particularly because so many residential buildings were being put up in the area with remarkable speed: several floors a week at times.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/nyregion/16collapse.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Deny and Shred]

11. I've seen more footage of bodies from this accident than 5 years in Iraq