Manhattan Crane Collapse

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Wednesday, 07 July 2004 06:54

Emergency crews continued to search the wreckage of smashed buildings on the East Side of Manhattan on Sunday, a day after a gigantic crane toppled across a city block, killing at least four people and injuring more than a dozen others.The collapse occurred at 2:22 p.m. on Saturday as the crane, about 22 stories tall and attached by girders to the apartment tower under construction at 303 East 51st Street, east of Second Avenue, broke away from its anchors and toppled south, across the block between 51st and 50th Streets, as workers at the site and people in high-rises for blocks around looked on, stupefied.

Witnesses told of a rising, thundering roar and clouds of smoke and dust as the crane ? a vertical latticed boom for its base, topped by a cab and jib, the swinging arm that lifts building materials ? fell across 51st Street and onto a 19-story apartment building at No. 300, demolishing a penthouse and shaking the building with the force of an earthquake.

The Buildings Department ordered 16 buildings vacated after the collapse and said at least six buildings ? five on East 50th Street and one on 51st Street ? sustained damage.

Workers were removing sections of the damaged crane to allow firefighters to search the rubble, a Fire Department spokesman said. The area around the collapse, 50th and 51st Streets between First and Third Avenues and Second Avenue between 42nd and 52nd Streets, remained closed to traffic on Sunday morning, the Department of Emergency Management said.

The Fire Department said four people were killed and 17 were injured; eight of the injured were taken to hospitals, four were treated at the scene of the collapse, and five firefighters suffered minor injuries.

Many residents of the neighborhood around the site of the collapse ? 51st Street between Second and First Avenues ? said they had been worried for months about the possibility of a collapse, calling the crane, looming higher each week, a menace, particularly because so many residential buildings were being put up in the area with remarkable speed: several floors a week at times.

Christopher Bianchi, 40, of Manhattan, owner of Crave Ceviche Bar on Second Avenue, said he saw three bodies on stretchers in the street. ?Their heads were covered,? he said. ?One of the police was giving last rites.?

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg arrived at the scene hours later, surrounded by an army of police officers, firefighters, city officials and reporters. ?It?s a sad day,? he said, as the lights of scores of emergency vehicles revolved and flashed. ?Our thoughts go out to those who were killed, and we pray that those who were injured will recover.?