Cranes are powerful pieces of machinery that get used daily for numerous versatile tasks, but they have their limits. This applies especially when they’re misused, used by unskilled operators, or badly placed. Sometimes though, they fail just because of plain bad luck even if everything was done by the book.
Most crane accidents are pretty mild affairs with minimal destruction or injury and death, but sometimes they can be remarkably catastrophic. We’re going to cover seven of these from all over the world and take a look at what went wrong.
1. Manhattan Crane Snap of March 2008
This is possibly the single worst crane accident in the history of a city spectacularly built with the use of these machines over the decades. This particular collapse happened during the mayoral administration of Michael Bloomberg and caused the deaths of 7 people while injuring 24 others.
In the event, a 200-foot-tall luffing-jib tower crane for building construction broke free of its supports while operators were trying to extend it higher with a new steel collar. It then fell from 18 stories up and also smashed part of a small next-door residential structure that later had to be demolished due to the damage it sustained.
2. Geoje, South Korea Collapse of May 2017
In this tragic contender among the world’s worst crane collapses, 6 workers were killed and 25 others injured when two cranes smashed into each other at a Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in the city of Geoje. According to Samsung’s investigative findings, the accident happened when the operators of both cranes and their signal people outside the two giant structures failed to communicate clearly as they were working. The structure being built was an oil platform in this case.
3. The Fall of “Big Blue”, Wisconsin, July 1999
AS Miller Park baseball stadium was being assembled in Milwaukee on July 14th, 1999, the huge “Big Blue” construction crane was hauling a massive 450-ton load on its hooks when it collapsed into the site below. 3 ironworkers were killed in the incident, which happened because of strong winds that were flowing that day.
The operators, otherwise conscious of possible crane safety issues inherent to hauling hundreds of tons, hadn’t taken these winds seriously enough despite warnings from some of the field workers. It was one of the worst crane accidents in the state’s history.
4. Matraman Jakarta Crane Accident of February, 2018
Our next fatal example of a crane collapse happened in the early morning hours of February 4th, 2018 when a girder launcher at a railway construction site collapsed in Matraman. In this case, 4 workers were killed by the falling multi-ton chunk of steel and 5 others sustained injuries. The Indonesia Construction Safety Association conducted an investigation and decided that the accident was caused by a mix of equipment failure and human error in placing it under undue stress.
5. Bellevue, Washington Tower Crane Toppling of November, 2006
On November 16, 2006, in Belleview, Washington, a huge 210-foot tower crane broke off from its moorings in a construction site and collapsed in a way that damaged three different buildings and killed one person, a resident inside one of the structures. The operator of the crane almost miraculously suffered only slight injuries though.
The Labor and Industries Department of Washington State investigated the case thoroughly and concluded that the collapse was caused by metal fatigue in the steel base frame of the crane, which was too weak to support its weight and movement.
6. Miami, Florida Crane Collapse of March, 2008
March of 2008 was a bad year for crane operators in the United States, because less than 15 days after the NYC accident we already listed above, a crane being used in the construction of a 46-story skyscraper in Miami, Florida suddenly twisted its way into falling on a home below the construction site.
The catastrophe crushed two workers to death and injured five other people. The impact was felt so strongly by onlookers that a number of them described feeling as if a small earthquake had suddenly happened.
7. The Catastrophic Mecca Crane Collapse of September, 2015
Finally, to top this list of construction disasters off, we come to arguably the single most tragic and deadly crane collapse of modern history. On September, 11 in the holy Islamic city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, an enormous red crane collapsed right into a part of the Masjid al-Haram Grand Mosque that sits at the heart of the city as one of its holiest structures.
Because the crane tumbled at 5:11 p.m. and smashed right through the rooftops of a piazza in the eastern side of the mosque, numerous people were in its path. The resulting human loss was enormous at 111 killed and 394 injured from among several nationalities. A lack of crane safety precautions coupled with heavy winds on this fateful day were blamed.
Aerial Alternatives
Accidents are impossible to completely escape no matter the human-technology being used for crucial projects and tasks, but some machines are more versatile than others when it comes to avoiding chaos. In the case of heavy lift and construction transport work, helicopter lifting services can be used to lift both large and small loads into highly precise and often otherwise inaccessible locations. Cranes are useful for most heavy construction projects, but in many other cases, their inherent bulk creates safety and logistics problems that airlifting avoids.