Crane Accident

The superstructure of a tower crane broke free at the Mercedes Benz stadium in Stuttgart on Saturday seriously injuring the operator. The flat top crane was rigged on a 14 metre tower and was working on the conversion of the historic 1933 40,000 seat mutipurpose stadium to a 60,000 seat football stadium.

Looking at the design, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a large concrete footing on top of four concrete pillars. At first my thought was that that they were trying to make it easier to finish the building at the end of the job. Normally you would pull the tower sections out, then go back and fill in the 3×3 meter holes in the floors that allowed the crane through. But if you had four concrete pillars close together like that, what could you put in that area of the building?

Singapore’s High Court has held a structural/mechanical engineer liable in a civil suit for the collapse of a tower crane that killed three people. Engineer Tan Juay Pah, who is also an authorised crane inspector, will have to pay damages to crane supplier Lee Tong Boon, who in turn has to compensate the main contractor Kimly Construction for the accident.

A large façade scaffold collapsed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Monday, killing at least three, after it was reportedly struck by a crane. The scaffold was on the front of the Princess Noura bin Abdul Rahman Women’s College, currently under construction.

A crawler crane operator died at JaxPort in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday in an accident that occurred while dismantling a large port crane that had been retired and sold. The old container/gantry crane had been purchased by a company that employed a contractor to dismantle and remove it from the port.

A four axle All Terrain crane tipped over and trapped the operator yesterday at an old phosphate plant in north Manatee County, Florida.

A tower crane collapsed killing it’s 24 year old crane operator. The story notes that one person on site is already blaming the height of the crane, the length of the jib, and the soft soils. One part of the picture supports him quite well.

A runaway container crane on Darwin’s East Arm wharf in Australia’s Northern Territory crashed into a crawler crane earlier this week causing serious damage. The accident occurred overnight when exceptional winds – said to be over 120kph.

A crane working on the Kaw Lake dam in north central Oklahoma tipped over the edge into the water yesterday. The operator managed to exit his cab before the crane went over.

A six axle All Terrain crane went over at the Orica Chemicals refinery at Kooragang Island, near Newcastle New South Wales, late last week, after one of its outriggers punched through the ground into some sort of void.