A large crane attached to a building under construction in midtown is dangling off the edge of...

[hrmjustin]

... the building. Building is at 157 west 57 street. It is a 60 story building under construction. Police have evacuated the area.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Oops this is very dangerous

stay safe

[FarPoint]

2. On MSNBC now

Whoooo scary!

[janlyn]

3. I want to know..

Who is the brain child who decided it would be OK to leave a crane up in hurricane force winds!!!!!!

[MineralMan]

4. Those cranes are very difficult to take down.

That's probably why it wasn't done. They're designed to stay there until the building is finished, and it would be a tall order to remove one before then.

[opiate69]

5. This^^^^

[MineralMan]

8. Those cranes erect themselves and climb their own

tower as they go. Taking them down takes a very long time, as the process must be reversed. Here's a video that shows the whole process, in animation:

Learning stuff is cool!

The way it collapsed puts the weight of the crane arm hanging over the counterweight. That is going to add huge stresses to the anchors that attach the tower to the building. With the wind coming, the entire tower could conceivably break away and fall. Those cranes operate by being carefully balanced atop the tower, and were never designed to have the arm's weight on the counterweight side. I'm not sure how they'll get this one down at this point. It may fall before that comes up, though.

[opiate69]

9. Oh I know, MM.. that facepalm wasn`t directed at you. Sorry if it wasn`t clear.

The company I work for makes rigging hardware for wire rope and chain. All of our customers are well versed in rigging cranes, natural resource extraction systems and marine apps. You kinda pick stuff up when they come to pick up their orders. That crane was most likely certified to withstand high winds, but sometimes shit just happens.

[MineralMan]

10. Oh, I know you weren't directing that at me.

I just thought I'd add the video so people could understand how climbing tower cranes work. It's an amazing thing, really. I added a little more to the post, too, discussing the additional stress of having the crane's arm bent back over the counterweight. It's an ugly scene, there.

[opiate69]

13. Cool.. fascinating, but yes, potentially very, very ugly situation.

Some great info you added to that video post. I would imagine that if it doesn`t come down on its own, they will just do as usual and take it apart with another crane. Though, being absolutely terrified of heights, I can`t imagine being one of the riggers that would have to climb around up there attaching shackles, slings and hooks.

[MineralMan]

15. That wouldn't work. The problem is that the only way to get a crane up

higher than that one is to erect another climbing tower crane that could be used to take that one apart. Weeks of work, at least, and millions spent on the job. High-rise construction is far more complex and expensive than people imagine.

When construction is finished, climbing cranes take themselves down, in the reverse of the way they build themselves. The video shows the building process. The crane adds new sections to itself as it goes up, one floor at a time. Then, it takes those sections out and lowers itself when construction is over, again, one at a time. Very time-consuming and hard to comprehend. But only another, different climbing tower crane could possibly remove this one. That is, unless it falls.

[opiate69]

17. Yeah, it would.. because..

Either way, they`re going to need to erect another crane to finish the construction on that job.

[MineralMan]

19. Depends. If the crane head and tower don't fall, they might be able to

repair it in place. It won't be easy, but they should be able to. If it's badly enough damaged, though, it will have to come down. Then, you're right. A new crane would be needed to continue the building. It's all going to slow things down for a long, long time, and cost a huge amount of money. The folks erecting that building are busy right now checking to see if the insurance covers this situation, and the insurance company's looking for a way out of paying for it. It the tower ends up peeling off, it's likely to damage other nearby buildings, too. Lots of folks sweating this out, I imagine.

Complicating matters, a new crane would have to be built on another corner of the building. The required anchor positions may not be on any but the current crane's corner. That could present some structural problems, since the cladding is installed a long way up the building.

It's just an ugly situation, all around.

[opiate69]

21. Oh yeah..

All the engineers, attorneys, claims agents, and investigators are making sure they`re stocked up on Advil right about now.

[MineralMan]

22. Not to mention the crane company.

The way the crane arm folded back over the counterweight, I'm wondering how it got there, actually. That's been puzzling me since I first saw the photo.

[opiate69]

23. Assuming the arm was extended over/towards the building,

I`d guess a huge wind gust hit the building, and deflected vertically up the side, blowing the arm up & over.

[janlyn]

30. thanks

for the video,very informative and interesting!!

[politicat]

14. Thanks for this!

Not to make light of a very dangerous situation, but my niece will adore this - kidlet loves buildings, construction and architecture.

[MineralMan]

16. Be sure to see the entire video. It's only after about 3 minutes that you get

to see the crane start building itself and climbing its own tower. Coolest thing ever.

[onecent]

11. Looks like it's gonna get moved one way or the other..My God this

storm is going to be MUCH LARGER than I think ANYONE anticipated...
its very scarey,

[MineralMan]

12. Yah. I'm afraid it's going to fall on its own.

Even if it doesn't, the destruction of the crane head means that it can't unbuild itself back down now. A really knotty problem, for sure.

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. The hoist drum and mechanism is likely perfectly fine.

I posted my idea on how they might accomplish recovering this thing in another thread last night;

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1665750

(I am by no means a cranewright, nor am I in the business, just interested in these machines and have learned a bit about cranes over the years)

What actually failed appears to me, from the various pictures and video I've seen, is the "lattice" of the jib itself. The jib had no load on it at the time and looked as if it was pointed into the wind, so the jib blew backward over the cab and counterweight. If the jib had a load on it and/or it was secured to the building, it might just still be standing. What fails in these sorts of circumstances are the welds on the ends of the diagonals lacing the jib together - the lattice.

[MineralMan]

28. I really don't know enough to judge.

I imagine that there will be people from the crane company there today, taking photos and then sitting down in a planning meeting. It's pretty complicated. I'm sure they'll figure out the way to handle it, though. Whatever happens, this is an expensive failure, and nobody's going to be amused.

I saw some photos of this crane the day before. The boom was raised almost to vertical. Now that I know that, I can see why it failed as it did. Some of those cranes can do that, but I wasn't sure about this one. If they had brought the boom to a high angle, it's pretty easy to understand why it collapsed back over the counterweight. Still a big problem, I'd think.

[janlyn]

24. Yes,but

As I mentioned to my boyfriend when he said the expense of dismantling, is what probably stopped them from removing it.

Think of the dollar amount of the lawsuit if that thing had come down on bystanders!!

Sometimes, safety should trump expense.

Just my thoughts.

[opiate69]

25. Not expense... time and necessity.

As has been pointed out upthread, you don`t just "dismantle" one if those cranes. It`s an exacting process that can take a week or more. That cranes failure was almost certainly due to some sort of error. It should have been able to weather that storm no problem. Just think of how many hundreds (if not thousands) of other similar cranes that were in the storms affected area which didn`t suffer a catastrophic failure.

[MineralMan]

27. I'm not sure how long it would take to remove

that crane, so I just can't say whether it would have made sense or not.

[Purrfessor]

29. Don't worry, Romney is sending his car elevator to assist

in the crane's removal. Oh, and a can of peas in case the workers get hungry.

[Cal Carpenter]

6. Info, pic, links here

in this thread for anyone interested

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021660548

[NYC Liberal]

7. NBC reporting a big piece of metal just fell off onto the street.

[NYC Liberal]

18. Problem solved:

(From Twitter)

[MineralMan]

20. LOL! nt