New York Construction Accident & Safety News

It’s been just over one year since a deadly crane collapse on the east side of midtown Manhattan, and some from the community gathered at the spot to pay their respects to those who passed away in the accident. Residents in the area wanted to make sure they brought the situation to light so that they don’t have to see another accident happen in the city again.
 

"The community has said enough is enough - safety has to come before speed," said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, at the vigil at 305 E. 50th St. "We’re not where we have to get to (but) we were able to make great gains. We will never tolerate one day where we see a crane breezy in the wind and think that’s OK."

The crane toppled from a 19-story building on East 51st Street and leveled a four-story town house. The seven victims included construction workers Brad Cohen, 54, from Farmingdale and Santino Gallone, 37, of Bellmore.

In the last year, the City Council has passed 12 laws concerning crane safety, including tougher rules on using the nylon straps that secure cranes. A recent city investigation found that the improperly rigged 11,000-pound steel brace on the tower crane fell after workers had attached only four of eight protective nylon slings.

The New York Times reports on corruption within the construction industry in New York City, especially as it pertains to cranes. Crane construction accidents were a big problem in the city last year, as multiple deaths resulted from poor crane regulations. The news of corruption comes as crane regulations are being implemented from the Buildings Commission.

After two fatal tower crane accidents last year, New York City instituted a series of reforms to increase safety and oversight in the construction industry, including requiring a 30-hour class for crane operators and other workers on the safest way to raise and lower a tower crane.

But some sessions of the city-mandated class are being taught by a union official who has admitted that he helped unqualified people, including organized crime figures, get into his union, according to sworn testimony and investigative reports. He and other union officials helped some of those men secure licenses to operate smaller cranes at construction sites across the city, the testimony and the reports say.

The Buildings Department in New York City has been undertaking quite an overhaul after two major construction accidents involving crane collapses. Now the new buildings commissioner, Robert LiMandri, has begun to lay out his plan for sweeping reforms.

On Tuesday, at the annual Build Safe New York conference, Mr. LiMandri announced a 41-point plan to overhaul how “high-rise construction” is regulated and carried out in New York City. The changes result from a $4 million High-Risk Construction Oversight review of crane, hoist, excavation and concrete operations, begun last year, which involved 30 engineering experts from CTL Engineering and Construction Technology Consultants.

The review included visits to nearly 600 job sites; 12 outreach meetings with more than 95 organizations; and Buildings Department safety conferences with crane manufacturers and building officials from cities around the world.

“This groundbreaking study is the type of critical evaluation that is necessary to ensure a new standard of safety is implemented across the city, one that the public demands and deserves,” Mr. LiMandri said in a statement. “The city’s economy depends on construction, and New Yorkers are depending on us to make that construction safe. After an exhaustive review of high-risk construction, we identified 41 specific ways that will help prevent accidents and raise accountability across the board.”

Crane regulations have been in the news a lot this year, and with that in mind, the city of Philadelphia has become the first city to execute rules on construction sites that utilize tower cranes. The state of Pennsylvania doesn’t enforce any formal construction crane regulations, but the city of Philadelphia proper will take the reigns on enforcing strict guidelines on tower cranes.

In the wake of the Miami and New York City construction site crane accidents in March, the Nutter administration is taking advantage of its unique ability to strengthen and protect its blue-collar workforce.

“These are unprecedented tower crane safety regulations,” said [City Councilman Jim] Kenney, in whose district 10 Rittenhouse lies. The new ordinance requires the tower crane owner to submit a certificate of insurance with a minimum of $15 million in liability naming the City of Philadelphia as an additional insured and certificate holder.

“Prior to today, a 12-year-old child could have run a crane,” said Frank Bardonaro Jr., president and COO of AmQuip, responsible for the construction of 10 Rittenhouse. AmQuip also did extensive work on the Comcast Center.

“The law now requires everyone, [starting with] the person to hook [the crane] into to the ground, to have proper training, certification and experience,” said Mr. Bardonaro. “The company that erects the crane has to have factory-trained technicians on site during these procedures.”

In the wake of construction accidents involving cranes in New York City, new laws are taking shape to ensure the safety of the workers. But are the new laws too much? Many claim that they are having a harder time getting things done on the jobsite because of them.

[T]he city’s construction industry says the rules have become too unwieldy to follow, are hard to enforce and often cause costly delays. Contractors say construction sites are often shut down for days or weeks for minor violations, like a missing piece of paperwork or a messy site. A shutdown at a high-profile site can run a contractor or developer over $100,000 a day.

"In some respects, it’s already overkill," said Louis Coletti, president of New York’s Building Trades Employers Association. "You’ve got new rules and regulations coming out every day."

Since the March 15 and May 30 crane accidents, the city has passed laws that require a 30-hour training course for tower crane workers, limit the use of nylon slings that hold construction loads, mandate regular safety meetings before raising or lowering the cranes, and overhaul licensing requirements for mobile crane operators.

With the outbreak of crane construction accidents in New York City recently, it is only fitting that a conference for crane safety experts should be held there. Topics at the conference are set to include national safety standards for crane operators.

Nine people — including two Staten Islanders — died in two crane collapses earlier this year in Manhattan; others have died in crane accidents in Florida, Texas and Las Vegas.

The city and industry officials are talking about new proposed federal crane regulations, including a national testing system for crane operators, and whether a national system can be created to track crane parts.

With all of the major construction and crane accidents happening in New York City in the recent months, the TGL Law Blog has some excellent news about the sites where one of those accidents occurred. It looks like all work has been halted no the site by the city of New York:

The site of a major construction accident this past March in Manhattan has been officially foreclosed on after the city revoked the site’s building permits. The project at 303 East 51st Street had a major crane collapse which killed seven people and forced the evacuation of many neighbors in the area. After review by city officials, it was discovered that the developer never had the proper building permits in the first place, and was rejected for a renewal on them.

Yet another crane accident occurred last week, leading the questions to fly regarding why there is such an influx of crane accidents this year as compared to the past. Several people who have been closely following the outbreak weighed in on the issue:

“I contend that (the accidents are) due to the real excess of construction activity in the U.S. in the last three or four years,” said Bernard Ross of the engineering and scientific consulting firm Exponent in Menlo Park, Calif.

Ross, whose specialty is heavy equipment and crane failure, said, “There’s just a very large increase in the number of cranes that are on job sites.” And, with the spike in crane use, there’s a resulting lack of workers qualified to operate the machines, Ross said. That compounds the potential for crane problems. There is no evidence that the crane operator in Monday’s local accident was not qualified.

National research on accidents, based on data collected by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, shows that from 2000 to 2006 there’s been an average of 78 crane-related deaths a year in the United States.

However, those numbers downplay the extent of crane problems, according to Tom Barth, a Goose Creek crane inspector and operator who also investigates collapses.

OSHA only tracks failures that result in fatalities or multiple injuries. Close calls like the incident at the Hilton Head marina aren’t counted. Barth said there’s a need for stiffer regulation. In South Carolina and 34 other states, crane operators are not required to be certified. He said that too often workers are learning to operate cranes on the job.

Great news from Newsday.com regarding new fines for those who violate the construction laws regarding crane operation. Many construction accidents have occurred recently in New York with cranes, and the new legislation is a big step forward in thwarting any future accidents from happening.

Criminal and civil penalties will increase for compromising David Paterson.

The law effective Nov. 1 makes altering licensing exams a felony. It also imposes fines of up to $5,000 for inspectors who falsify reports and permanently revokes their licenses.

The measure follows a spike in construction accidents in New York City, where crane accidents have killed at least nine people since March.

Yet another crane accident happened this week, killing a man in Smithville, Texas and severely injuring another. The crane was being used to work on a bridge over the Colorado River when it suddenly overturned causing the injuries.

The mobile crane was gripping a steel girder that was about to be removed from the bridge, Lt. Lonny Richardson of the Smithville Police Department said. A second girder came loose, falling on the other girder and causing the crane to overturn, he said.

The workers in the manlift were removing the fasteners that bound the beams together and were knocked out of the lift when the beams and crane fell, Richardson said He said the worker who was killed fell about 60 feet onto a stack of construction materials.

Since a construction accident in March left seven people dead in New York City, there have been more than twelve people killed in crane related accidents across the country.