Manhattan crane topples into street killing 1, injuring 3

Eyewitness News Lauren Glassberg spoke with the workers that caught the falling crane on video:The massive crane came crashing down at Worth and Church streets in just before 8:30 a.m., clipping at least one building and landing across a row of parked cars.

“The fact is, this is a very very sad incident, we lost a life”, Mr De Blasio said. “Because the crane was being lowered, workers were directing pedestrians away from it on a street that otherwise would likely have been teeming with people”.

He added: “One person dead, sucks”.

The Fire Department of NY confirmed the fatality and is on the scene responding to the accident.

– January 2013: A crane’s 170-foot-long boom fell and pulled down part of the wooden framework of an apartment tower under construction in Queens’ Long Island City neighborhood, injuring seven workers.

It was still unclear why the 565-foot (170-meter) crane fell, De Blasio said, explaining that a crew “had inspected the crane yesterday”.

NY was under a winter weather advisory Friday morning, with the forecast calling for snow and sustained winds between 16 miles per hour and 18 miles per hour, and gusts as strong as 29 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.

Robert Harold says he also saw a person lying motionless body in the street.

Later in the day, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was briefed on the situation, and the New York Police Department posted video of the mayor surveying the damage.

A FDNY radio dispatcher, taking reports from the field, said a survey of the buildings in the immediate area found them all to be safe and stable. A seventh worker was injured but managed to survive, the OSHA records show.

The man who was killed when a crane collapsed to the ground in Tribeca was a Harvard University graduate who immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe.

Two workers were using a crane to lift a 442-pound steel plate when the bolts holding the machine in place gave way.

The crane is owned by Bay Crane, but it’s not clear who was operating it. That company owned a crane that collapsed 30 floors in midtown in 2015.

He said the crane stood 15 to 18 stories high before it collapsed.