Officials working to determine cause of NYC crane collapse

The deadly collapse of a construction crane in lower Manhattan on Friday highlights New York’s failure to adequately address a safety “crisis” at hundreds of worksites across the city, an official watchdog said. However, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said municipal buildings officials had failed to implement many recommendations in a 2014 audit on construction crane safety.

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.

Guttman says Wichs worked at the New York-based computerized financial trading firm Tower Research Capital.

“Our hearts go out to the families of the individual who has been lost”, de Blasio said at a late morning news conference. “Thank God it was not worse”, he said.

ABC7 reports that the victim was a 38-year-old who was sitting in a vehicle that was crushed.

The huge construction crane was being lowered to safety in a snow squall when plummeted onto the street in the Tribeca neighborhood of lower Manhattan.

The 172m-foot crawler crane was in the process of being lowered and secured in Lower Manhattan as a precaution due to heavy winds when it fell forward onto the street below.

A person answering the phone at the office of Bay Crane in the borough of Queens would not discuss the accident or confirm that the crane belonged to the company.

The construction site had been investigated by building inspectors the day before and had been approved for work to proceed.

– March 2008: A almost 200-foot-tall crane fell as it was being lengthened in a neighborhood near the United Nations headquarters, demolishing a townhouse and killing six construction workers and a tourist.

A collapsed crane lies on the street on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016, in NY.

De Blasio said wind speeds were around 20 miles per hour when crews arrived Friday morning so a decision was made to secure the crane.

Mayor de Blasio says the crew had been directing people away from the area as the crane was being moved. Ten people were injured by debris, and part of the building facade was shattered. “Our building rattled … shook”, he said.

A spokesman for the building’s owners said in a statement that they were “saddened by the injuries and loss of a life”. He did not see the crane fall, but tells us, “as soon as I got up to our floor and in the office, the whole building shook violently for a couple seconds, and then I ran back down to the street”.

Cranes have also dropped loads or come close to falling apart in other incidents, including a dramatic episode in which a crane’s boom almost snapped off during Superstorm Sandy and dangled precariously over a midtown block near Carnegie Hall.