It is certainly plausible that this crane could tumble down now that it is not supported as planned. The major risk is debris from this rig or dislodged by the rig falling from such a height to the ground.

The winds are reducing in intensity, now around 50mph. But you wonder what damage has accumulated already in the metal when it was around 80mph. The fall could entail collateral damage, given there's a half done building next to the crane with glass windows. A lot of property damage in short.

This is the image, just to lend perspective. That's got to be atleast 100 ft of metal. Notice the cables that appear to be still holding the sorry structure in place.

Here's a (poor quality) video of the crane as the hurricane did its damage.

A crane expert actually called into the Piers Morgan show on CNN and said the crane operator did not follow manufacturer recommendations, that they should have lowered the boom and/or changed its orientation relative to the wind. Before I could comprehend the speaker, Piers shifted topic and had him hang up. Does anyone know what the 'expert' was trying to state?

Don't know, I've been glued to NYC news all day. I did hear some city official proclaim that the crane and supporting tower had been 'properly inspected' last week. For whatever that's worth.

being properly inspected (for what?), and properly stowed are two different things.

And its not like they didn't have enough time to properly stow it.

That construction project manager's job should be on the line here?

yup . the boom was at least 60 degrees , it should have been lower around 20 degrees or so . and the hook fastened to something on the roof of the building .

the site managers should have known better.

i believe thats a favelle Favco crane made in australia , and they are very lucky the boom fragments didnt snap off and drop , testament to its good design.

the whole crane is a writeoff of course , the tower sections are bent like an S bend the whole way down.

thats going to be a very tricky demolition job , to actually disentangle parts that are so damaged that they are barely self supporting , and lower them to the ground , might need two cranes to support it and a third to lower the bits to the ground

lets keep an eye on that one and see how they approach it

very interlesting Colonel Klink !

On the plus side, this has received such wide coverage that it would take a real idiot not to learn the lessons. It'll happen again, somewhere, someplace, but hopefully not too soon. How they recover the situation will be well worth the read - it doesn't sound like an easy task.

favelle Favco, I think one of the contractors in our area purchased one of those when one of the hosiptals put in an expantion, about 10 years ago. it was a couple million $.

didn't they make the worlds largest crane?

I work in Manitowoc Wisconsin, Home of Manitowoc Crane. ^{no not a bird.}

Would you be under full sail in a hurricane?

I'm not sure, usually they bring the boom down horizontal or nearly so and let them rotate in the wind so they keep changing to offer least resistance, like a weather vane. From the video, that boom was left in the up position and held pointing into the wind so the wind got underneath it and tipped it back over the cabin.

As I understand it, can't the wind currents in a city like NY be pretty choatic?

They can, due to something like a "horizontal wind shear" (I don't know if there is a better name for it. Probably, but I don't know it.) that can result when winds are channeled at relatively low speed across a wide space, into a suddenly narrowed space between buildings. The increase in density due to the narrowing results in a sudden sharp increase in velocity. I've been to NYC twice, at the Stock Exchange (work, not fun. Come to think of it, I don't think NYC is fun, anyway) and both times, on the street, nearly got knocked off my feet by a sudden gust of wind, where it had been very calm at street level for an hour or more, before.

I've heard that the winds aloft, between the taller buildings, can reach sudden gust speeds of up to 100MPH, when ground level breezes are just that, mild breezes.

Wouldn't know beyond my own ground level experiences, but they were pretty tough.

You might be surprised at how many things 'accidentally' get left in the wrong place or position when insurance and an impending natural disaster are in play.

A buddy of mine has a salvage business that deal largely with fire and insurance claims. A number of years ago I helped out on a afire cleanup in the Minneapolis area where the ware house had a fire start. Due to a 4 hour delay in the fire department getting there due to heavy traffic it was sure odd to see how many highly expensive manufacturing machines, components, and finished products manages to make their way from other areas of the plant that were unaffected by the fire.

What was really amazing was how these machines, some in a department over 200 feet away that never even received smoke damage, managed to rip themselves right off their foundations and right out of their wiring systems all most like a 10,000# capacity forklift that was also in the warehouse fire had picked them up and carried/piled them there!

So my opinion about the crane is it was probably heavily insured and 'accidentally' left parked facing strait into the wind being there has only been a few days of for warning about the storm coming which is no where near enough time to take the nesisary 10 or so minutes it takes to park it properly.

Wonder how many would do that if their kids were watching.

the 1st and shift crane operator were talking as the storm hit.

1st shift crane operator: I'm am sure glad you stowed that crane before the storm hit.

2nd shift crane operator: huh?

This reminds me of the three retired industrialists talking about the circumstances under which they retired.

A) My garment factory burned down and the insurance paid off.

B) My manufacturing plant was flooded by a nearby burst storage tank, and the insurance paid off.

C) My office building was destroyed in an earthquake and the ...

A) and B) - How did you buy an earthquake?

I would imagine the real cost of insurance fraud is way higher than we'll ever know, and that an amazing (to me, at least) number of claims are paid off without even a good investigation, with the claims adjustor ALSO retiring early (wink, wink).

I have helped him do a number of fire and related insurance cleanups and I have yet to ever see one that didn't have at least some of what I would consider highly suspicious activity or just strangely out of place items at it.

The place near Minneapolis was the tops for me though. One of the many items they made there was class ABC portable fire extinguishers! If I remember correctly they had over 200 of them filled and ready to go, plus multiple tote containers of the powder, literal tons of the stuff, they use in other classes of fire extinguishers as well.

Yet somehow not one made it off a single shipping pallet or out of its box in the 4+ hours the place burned before the fire dept got there but by god they put a lot of effort into trying to smother the fire with large expensive manufacturing equipment!

twin towers will take some beating.

I would have thought that they would lash and chain the crane arm to the framing of the building, but somebody thought otherwise...

Watching the arm wrap itself around the cab like so much wet newspaper it occurred to me that all the engineering had gone into providing support against the force of gravity - not much into resisting forces going in the opposite direction. Again, securing the arm to the building during a hurricane seems like a no brainer.

I saw one video shot looking from the back of the cab, and while the struts and beams were all mangled, there were several huge cables that looked pretty taut. I'd guess they are what's holding the whole thing up, and they look like they can probably take the load and flexing indefinitely.

In one video it looked like when the arm collapsed it struck the 'climber' just below the cab. If it's damaged it may not be possible to get the crane down without building another one beside it to do the job. I'm glad I'm a flat lander...

Looks Like it Weather Vaned all right.....

Right over the top of the cab!