Make that 323 D.O.B.

 

NY Post

A crane toppled onto a Queens building under construction Friday morning, officials said. 

The commercial boom truck fell along the side and on top of the two-story building on 36th Avenue near 35th Street around Dutch Kills about 8:30 a.m., according to FDNY and Department of Buildings officials. 

Workers told PIX 11 that the crane was loading steel beams into place at the site of the new apartment building when the load apparently became too heavy. 

No one was hurt, officials said. The cause remains under investigation.

“We got a report that there [were] only two workers inside the building under construction. They were also removed,” FDNY Captain Carmine Calderaro said at the scene.

“We had an aerial view of all sides, and we were pretty confident we did our due diligence to make sure nobody was in the building right now.

“Apparently, they were doing some work. The crane was up and moving some equipment around. That’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Crane operator suspected of causing a death while distracted on his cellphone

 

NY Daily News

A crane operator fined $10,000 for using his cellphone while hoisting steel on a Bronx job site is also under investigation for his role in the death of a Manhattan construction worker in 2019, the Daily News has learned.

Michael Chichester was fined the $10,000 in January for the Bronx violation — as investigators continue to examine his role in the gruesome death of hardhat Gregory Echeverria during the construction of a luxury building at 570 Broome St. in SoHo on April 13, 2019.

 “Mr. Chichester was one of the parties involved in the 2019 fatal crane incident,” Buildings Department spokesman Andrew Rudansky said Tuesday. “That incident is still under investigation by the Department of Buildings and our partners in law enforcement. Further enforcement actions related to that incident are pending the conclusion of that joint investigation.”

Sources familiar with the probe say Chichester was fiddling with his phone the day that Echeverria, 34, died.

When reached by The News Tuesday, Chichester initially denied being himself, referring to himself in the third person instead. “What kind of story do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“It was a tragic accident,” he eventually said of the SoHo death before hanging up. “I went through all the investigation. I’m a crane operator. I’ve been a crane operator for a long time. If I look away it’s on me, but I follow my signal guy. A tragic accident happened. You’re making a mountain out a molehill.”

The tragic sequence that led to Echeverria’s death began as a team of workers were assembling a mobile crane to lift mechanical equipment to the the roof of the Broome St. job, officials said.

A second crane was lifting counterweights into place to stabilize the mobile crane. After putting one counterweight on the back of the crane using two of the three ropes attached to the hook, the crane operator, believed to be Chichester, lifted the ropes away from the weight.

But the third rope caught the lifting attachment - known as a lug - and ripped the counterweight off the crane and into the air. Counterweights can run from 8 to 16.5 tons each.

“The man was split in half,” a distraught co-worker told the Daily News at the time.

A preliminary investigation found that a failure to remove excess rope contributed to Echeverria’s death. Officials said the probe, which the city’s Department of Investigations is involved in, is examining whether others besides Chichester had a role in Echeverria’s death.

In August 2019, city officials suspended work at job sites where work was being done by United Crane and Rigging, a firm linked to the Broome St. death and to an incident on the FDR Drive where an overloaded crane toppled. The company was slapped with $11,000 in fines amid the pending probe.

One of those job sites was for an affordable luxury public housing building.

 

Billionaire row tower crane spins like a music box ballerina and drops 8 ft. blades on 57th St.

 

 NY Post

A crane on top of a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan went spinning in the wind Thursday evening, sending debris from the under-construction building falling to the street below. 

The crane, atop a Midtown building under construction on West 57th Street near Sixth Avenue, spun wildly in the wind and rain, video taken at the scene shows. 

Fire officials said the FDNY was responding to building debris at 111 West 57th St. It was not clear if there were any injuries in the incident. The NYPD also warned pedestrians to avoid the area because of falling debris.

“Please avoid the area of West 57th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues due to an unstable crane and falling debris. 

Expect emergency vehicles and traffic in the area,” the department said in a tweet.

The Department of Buildings said the crane was safely secure, but “weathervaning” in the wind, a normal crane function which allows them to swing 360 degrees when not in use. 

The agency was investigating what caused the debris to come crashing down from the building.