Investigation begins into NYC crane accident that injured 10
New York City's Department of Buildings has begun looking into what caused Sunday morning's crane accident that sent a 23,000-pound air conditioning unit tumbling 30 stories, leaving 10 people with injuries.
"We're obviously looking for anything we need to do here that might change our policies," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday. "Sometimes, it's a situation where something happened that was truly very narrow and specific to that one incident, but I'm not going to conjecture until we get the investigation back."
The city also will look into all active rigging work being performed by Bay Crane, the company that owns the equipment that workers used to hoist the gigantic unit, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Experts and officials said the accident Sunday morning could have been much worse. Workers for the Brooklyn-based Skylift Contractors were using a 375-foot crane to hoist the nearly-two-ton unit to the top of a building in Manhattan's Midtown when the unit toppled to the ground after slamming into the building in three places and carrying parts of the building with it.
A vacate order for the building remained in place Monday and five blocks of Madison Avenue on Manhattan's East Side remained closed to traffic, city officials said.
Officials said they expect that portion of Madison Avenue to reopen on Tuesday.
"I think the city dodged a bullet," NYC Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told the NY Daily News. "You see the after effects of the way this fell, and the injuries were all minor. When something drops from that height in our crowded city and we suffer no serious injuries, it certainly is a good outcome."
The injured included five civilians, two members of the police department, two construction workers and a firefighter, city officials said.
LesroyByrde, who works for Pacific Drywall and Construction, told the Daily News, "The unit they were hoisting was really, extremely heavy." He added, "It was a massive piece of machinery going to the 29th floor."
Investigators are now trying to figure out if the accident was caused by an error by an operator for Skylift Contractor or a mechanical malfunction.
The NYPD said Monday it had nothing new to report regarding the incident.