Should the Collapsed Crane Have Been Bolted?
BREAKING: Buildings Inspector Arrested Over False Report

Investigators have been looking at the nylon strap, used to help place a heavy steel collar on the crane, as a possible culprit in the Saturday's East 51st Street devastating crane collapse, but one veteran construction worker who helped dismantle the collapsed told WNBC.com the crane wasn't "properly anchored to the ground."

The worker "noticed there were no bolts connecting the bottom of the crane tower to a base of steel and concrete beams crisscrossed in an 'H' pattern and built around a Con Ed vault with a transformer underground. There were also no bolts connecting those beams to the street, he said," which could have help stop the crane from falling. A source told WNBC "the engineer who approved the crane assembly chose to straddle the Con Ed vault...bolting is not always an option."

Crane operator Wayne Bleidner was buried yesterday, while funerals were held for construction workers Brad Cohen and Anthony Mazza today. There are still vacate orders on at least 11 buildings. And it's really amazing more people weren't injured (at one point, there were 24 injured) or killed -look out at this photograph of a 20-foot beam that "catapulted" into a townhouse like, as one firefighter said, "a shish kebab."

Update:
WNBC now reports that the inspector who was supposed to check on the crane - after Turtle Bay resident and former contractor Bruce Silberblatt called 311 to complain that the crane was not properly secured (see below) on March 4- has been arrested. The inspector "filed paperwork saying that he inspected the crane -- but he never did."

The Daily News spoke to inspector Edward Marquette after the collapse; though the DOB's records show he visited the crane on March 4, he claimed he never visited the crane that day. And in spite of the arrest, the DOB doesn't want the public to think the false report caused the collapse (because the crane was inspected on March 14 - a day before the collapse).

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on March 20, 2008 3:36 PM

Comments [rss]

JacqueMehoff

he's the scapegoat.

west side Michael

Yes! Now they are now only FOUR crane inspectors in

our great Department of Buildings.

Anyway last Saturday I wrote this blog about

DOB inspectors looking at jobs without leaving their city owned car and also via the cellphone.

This guy is just a dupe for the Bloomberg crowd

to say something about this horror.

Goomba

Some guy in construction paid off a soonad inspector. This isn't news this is New York.

wer1212

babyhitler - WRONG. No - they would not have held. I don't think you understand physics. Let's put it this way, if you screwed 4 bolts (relative in size to the bolts being screwed to the baseplate) through your feet to the floor of the subway, and then re-enforced your legs so your knees could not bend, and the subway took off, you would not only fall over, but you ankles would snap.

JGNY

Schwartize is right. Bolting the bottom would have only created a different point where the moment would fail, higher up perhaps. Without proper bracing to the building it would have fallen no matter what the base plate connection was.

TimSPC

It's a little insensitive to have "BREAKING" in all caps in this headline.

MissMeowy

Marquette was arrested this afternoon:

From the NY Times:

"A Buildings Department inspector, Edward J. Marquette, has been arrested and charged with lying to New York City authorities about inspecting the crane that collapsed on Saturday afternoon, killing seven people, injuring dozens of others and causing widespread property damage."

Snoopy

^ A lot of that would depend on what it would be bolted to. OK so the bolts wouldn't pop but whatever it was bolted to would probably break loose. Kind of like having your shoes nailed to a two foot square of plywood. If you go, the plywood square would go also.

The bolting would only help the crane from shifting laterally off the base which helped distribute the load.

babyhitler

shwartzie - that's presuming that the bolts were made out of human cartilidge, which they aren't. if the bolts were strong enough they would have held.

drewo

The inspector "filed paperwork saying that he inspected the crane -- but he never did."

A civil servant shirking his duty? Shocking!!!

Art Stewel

Next story - a culture of kickbacks and false reports at DOB.

JacqueMehoff

wow, that's something I wasn't expecting.

You'd think it would be the RA/PE and such getting arrested for filing false plans.

Schwartzie

Bolts at the baseplate wouldn't have prevented this accident.

Have you ever tried riding the subway with your feet right next to each other? It's almost impossible not to fall when the train accelerates, decelerates, or corners if you're not holding on.

Now imagine your feet are still next to each other but are now glued to the floor and you're still riding without holding on. You're still going to fall.

Overturning moments or torques act on a body's center of gravity, not at the pivot point. This is problematic for anything critically narrower than it is tall.