Sunday, December 16, 2007

Stop Work Order for crane at Ground Zero

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- An undetected weakness may have caused a crane's nylon sling to rupture abruptly and unleash seven tons of steel onto a construction trailer across from ground zero, the builder's spokesman said.

Builder Defends Safety Record after Crane Accident

The accident Friday left an architect hospitalized and builder Tishman Construction Corp. facing four violations, including unsafe hoist operations and failure to safeguard the public during construction. The contractor leasing the crane was also cited with unsafe hoisting operations, and the city Buildings Department issued a stop-work order for the crane.

Architect in crane crash may never walk

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe Lancaster will sign some secret papers for this developer too. Wouldn't want to stop progress!

KG2V said...

Nylon sling breaks. No real excuse, and I've never seen it happen in person, but..

I used to work in contruction - rigging in fact. Nylon slings were used constantly. Generally yellow in color, with a red core - if you see ANY red from wear/cuts, you immediately get a new sling, and destroy the old one (we used to cut them into 5-6 pieces, and throw the pieces away)

Thing is - the place I worked for sold the slings, so getting a new sling for us was a matter of walking up to the supervisor and saying "Hey, we need a new N sized sling"

I could see a line guy not noticing a worn sling, or there being a sharp edge on a sling. IF it was a worn sling, it'll be obvious to the investigators - they don't wear all at one place all at once. If it's a cut, that'll be fairly obvious too - Wear - No excuse. Cut? Can happen - I've seen slings get damaged in a lift, and then get thrown out.

Another posiblility? Someone overloaded a sling - say a 5 ton crane, a 4 ton load, and a 2 ton sling. What's worse is there are like 3 ways to use a sling - and a 2 ton sling used as a choker sling is a 1 ton sling - get a new guy who doesn't know what he's doing - or doesn't realize that you have to derate the sling...

That's part of the reason that in the shop where we had 1 ton cranes, we used '2 ton' slings - because as a choker, they were still rated > 1 ton - so we didn't have to worry. We only had ONE load figure to worry about

Just figured you guys might want to hear from someone who used to do this "in another life" (like 25 years ago)

Anonymous said...

This site just keeps on killing !

We've got the DOB......we don't need terrorists!

Anonymous said...

i work in the heavy trades industry also - and the use of liquor and drugs is enormous - having a hangover is a major possibility - They cant do drug or liquor testing at these sites - If they sent everyuone home who tested positive - there would be no one left to work. Shameful and disgraceful