What else is new? Well, it seems like we have seen a rash of crane accidents lately. Which made me think of the number of crane accidents I had seen during my construction career; four. All potentially deadly, but in each case, only the cranes and the buildings suffered any damage. Cranes are mechanical; they will fail. We were taught from the very beginning to never walk under a load while hoisting and to avoid being under the boom at any time. And tower cranes are at their most vulnerable when they are being raised. Most tower cranes are self-climbing; they use jacks to lift and raise the heavy rotating assembly off of the tower portion. Then, the crane lifts another tower section up under the cab and ironworkers bolt it into place before the jacks are lowered and the crane is solidly in place and a little taller. And when the job is over, they reverse the process to take the crane down. Once the tower crane has reached a height that a conventional heavy crane can reach, they then use that crane to finish the disassembly process. As you can see, from the description, the whole process is inheritantly dangerous. And the way I remember it, the entire area around the crane was secured and no one was allowed in, except for the ironworkers involved in taking it down.
No comments:
Post a Comment