Just saw this a minute ago. A little bit of a reality check on the dangers of tower cranes. Looks like the crane was being being dissembled when the mast broke. I’m sure more will come out but four people dieing is a tragedy. It’s really easy to get to get to comfortable and complacent when you do that kinda thing regularly. It’s just a reminder that at those heights, you typically don’t get to make two mistakes. Your first one can easily be your only one. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ki...ntId=281-a09a8074-0e42-43bd-bce3-85c52781b844
I saw that in the news https://komonews.com/news/local/cra...-on-boren-and-mercer-blocking-eastbound-lanes Very sad that people were killed. They said the weather service only had gusts to 23 but I was quite a bit south of there earlier and it felt considerably stronger....
North-facing picture of the collapsed tower crane I found Satellite image of the building site with the partially built tower crane from a few months ago.
It's been scary windy here in SE Idaho the last 3 days, very high winds aloft, I was flying in them while it was still calmer on the ground. Seems like as the day goes on the wind level lowers, something to do with the barometric pressure changes as the day goes on. But I know at least in my area, it is somewhat common to have no wind at ground level, but got up a couple thousand feet, and you have wind, and when that happens and I land and it's calm again down low, I plan on it getting windy before noon. Obviously, wind had something to do with this accident, the gustiness of this cold pressure system moving thru probably had something to do with it.
Right now only the news media has said anything about wind and some reports state wind was likely not a factor. One report mentioned the crane was being taken down. It will be awhile before the public gets to know much. Last one was months of speculation until some safety agency declared it to be a manufacturer's defect. In my mind, someone seriously screwed up.
The mast had been taken off and 2 ironworkers were rigging the cab when the tower collapsed. A few people thought it was leaning before it failed. One guy even did a timelapse before hand to see if it was moving. https://streamable.com/0ml8c
So it was in the removal phase.... I heard a guy on the radio this morning saying how he had seen the site and everything was on the ground indicating failure before any removal.... so I'm guessing it fell right on the parts of the crane that were already removed...
What you heard had to have been wrong. The photos don't show either the front or rear booms, the drums or the CW landing points. So what failed was a bare tower and house.
Yeah, I know.... this is just what a guy that was working near the site said he had seen... but he either misguessed or doesn't have a clue... although he talks like he does Yes, seems weird that just the tower with no booms could have failed... even with winds off the chart! so who knows what happened... I'm sure more videos of it will surface sooner or later and offer clues as to what happened.
The load out, tower base and mobile crane all were on he north or east. The crane fell towards the south. My guess is that as they were handling the last boom piece the wind got it and it struck the tower hard enough to collapse a vertical chord.
A video clip shows at least one man standing in the cab apparently handling lines from the picking crane. For some reason the picking crane pulled the lines away and swung violently to the west. There is another clip that was on the NBC affiliate last night that shows the tower falling. It is tipping from the base of the tower and all fell as a unit. Just my thoughts at this point but I would have thought that each section of the tower would have be disconnect and lifted individually. In this case that piece of video shows what I would have thought would be removing the cab section and working down. Why it would have tipped at the base is the question.
The mobile crane was on the north side of the building and the tower was setup inside the building footprint.
It is not unusual to take them down with a assist rig taking multiple sections at a time. I would not be surprised if the crew had most of the bolts out before they got it rigged and it started to go before they got it hooked. Just speculation on my part but that has been the common theme recently on erecting and dismantling collapses. One went down a couple of years ago when jacking and they had unbolted the jacking section and started dropped it without re-bolting the head section to the tower first. 7 dead on that one.These are normally done on a weekend when the job is empty. It seems that the crews that do it for a living sometimes miss a step or final inspection before the next step, or get in a hurry and push things because they got by with it before. A tragedy and the dead workers and the innocent killed on the street have families left suffering and wanting in any event.
Found this picture. Look at the areas where the sections join together. Everything has come apart cleanly, nothing torn out or bent. Someone took the pins out too soon.
Wow!!!! sure looks that way...
Dashcam footage of the tower collapse.
Its hard to imagine even considering removal of pins prior to rigging it ,but i have no familiarity with tower cranes and their dismantling procedures. Sorry to see lives lost.
Those pictures of mast sections with no pins seem like a giveaway to me. It’s not uncommon to go down and knock 4 pins out of each section. Each section typically has 8 pins. 2 on each mast cord. Not unusual to go down and knock 1 out of each cord once the jib and counterjib are off. Could have been a miscommunication. Send new guy down the tower to knock half the pins outta each section. “Hey knock those pins out on your way down” new guy heads down the tower not knowing they meant only knock half the pins out. I can’t imagine a seasoned guy being comfortable up on top of the tower with out it being pinned. But I wasn’t there. I could be way wrong on what happened. Definitely hit a little close to home for me. I’ll be nervous next time I’m up on one.
Unfortunately it has happened more often that it should. There are no second chances in that game. Our operators were required to check the tower pins on the way up and down each day as they climbed. Never ever heard an argument from them about it either.
I've been out of heavy construction for quite a while, but back about 25 to 40 years ago I could see almost every overly agro superintendent I knew getting all excited and ordering such work. But things change and I would have hoped that the ironworkers were specifically trained by Morrow to disassemble their cranes. If not, that is what I see in the immediate future, that the crews will have to go to training classes and be certified for each manufacturer and broad class of crane.
Security camera that was pointing west towards the tower crane.
https://tdn.com/news/state-and-regi...cle_5666e88e-95ff-5c6b-b6ad-f8e6b1ecaf48.html
Any more word on this mess?
They cleared Omega Morgan but there are three other companies involved and nothing has been said about any of them. Plenty of people are saying that the pins were pulled but nothing is official.
Thanks
It sure looked like pulled pins to me in the video. The operator never had a chance. I wonder if the one whom pulled the pins made it?
There apparently wasn't an operator in it. It appears it was two members of the dismantling crew that were killed. At this point nothing has been made public about the who, what and why the event occurred.
Actually they cleared Seaberg, who supplies the operators on day to day operations. Omega-Morgan, NW Tower Cranes, GLY and Morrow have not been cleared. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ion-into-one-firm-involved-in-crane-collapse/
Nice catch. I saw that article awhile back and crossed the names. I saw a part of another article in the business journal that mentions Omega but I don't carry that subscription anymore so it won't let me see the rest.
The results of the investigation by the state is in and here is the news report about on the local Fox television station. https://q13fox.com/2019/10/17/serio...olation-led-to-deadly-seattle-crane-collapse/ People call these types of events accidents. Read the report and decide for yourself if this was accidental, incompetence or willful negligence. The police investigators have been handed the case now and must decide.
So the investigation pretty miuch confirmed what everyone had already hinted at on the basis of the photographic evidence. That wasn't an accident IMHO, I don't see even how much time might be potentially saved by pulling all (or almost all) the pins first, rather than pulling them section by section as the crane is brought down. You have to have people up there to rig each section as it is removed so why not pull the pins for the section at that point.?
Agree on the term accident being too wide a terminology for that kind of disaster. If I decide to wear a black hoodie and black pants and wander across an interstate highway during a rain storm on a moonless night and get splated by a KW doing 70 mph is that an accident? That about sounds as smart as what I as an untrained crane man see this one being. Might as well lay on ground under a D-10 with an air wrench and start zipping out the belly pan bolts!
I don't know how they do it in the US but the construction company I worked for some years back had a "tower crane crew" who travelled the length & breadth of the country doing nothing but erect, climb up/down, & dismantle tower cranes. They were also the guys who did the 6-month & annual inspections. I worked with them for a while and would've trusted them with my life. I maybe be wrong but I get the impression that the ironworkers who died were sent from the local union hall in response to a request for manpower to work with the guy from the crane company. TBH that way of working doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence compared to what I was used to years back.
Just out on the hotel collapse in New Orleans they are going to explosively drop those two tower cranes as too dangerous to try to dismantle.
Morrow, The crane company that owns the crane is a branch of a conglomerate that owns most of the tower cranes in the U.S. They operate under various names about the U.S. They use erection and dismantling crews that are trained in erection, jumping them (up and down) and dismantling. They normally do the work on a weekend when the job is empty or nearly so. I think they get to confident in what they think they can get away with and take shortcuts. The old, lets get it done in 4 hours and get paid for our 8 attitude. Then when the **** hits the fan the shortcuts kills them. Over 90 percent of toppled towers in the U.S. fell during erection, jacking, or dismantling. The rest were bad storms. I can not think of one that went down due to load. The vast majority of the crews follow the rules and manufacturers instruction very carefully and live to be old and crabby like many of us. Guys like you worked with Nige. Then you get a wildcat crew like this one and this happens. I don't know what the failure percentage rate is considering there are thousands of hammerhead tower cranes in the U.S. going up and down all the time. Any failure is big news and any failure is to many. Not really sure why the G.C. is also always held liable as they have no control over the tower crane erection crew. It is part of the crane rental. They did their part correctly when they hired the tower crane company with their "experts" to dismantle it. But then our legal system and the lawyers always blame the ones they think got the deepest pockets. Then the contractor gets stuck for all the collateral damage on top of it.
I came across Morrow during the last construction job in the Caribbean. Two tower cranes out of their Houston depot were used on the job. IIRC they just sent "a guy" to superintend the erection & dismantling and we had to supply the rest of the labour from our crane crew. I may be wrong on that though.