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Vol. 77/No. 3      January 28, 2013

 
Seven workers injured in
New York crane collapse
 
BY EMMA JOHNSON
NEW YORK—Seven workers were injured when a crane collapsed in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens Jan. 9. The crane was owned by a company with a record of unsafe practices and deadly crashes.

Workers at the site said they heard cables snap before the collapse. It crashed into scaffolding and plywood on the second floor of a 25-story building under construction. Three workers were caught underneath and suffered a range of injuries, none of them life-threatening. There were some 70 workers at the site.

The crane was approved for use by the city last October. It has a 380-foot boom and jib similar to the model that collapsed and killed a worker last April at the site of a subway extension.

The Department of Buildings issued a stop work order and suspended the operator’s license. “As a result of our preliminary investigation, it appears that the operator was attempting to lift a load … double the weight capacity for this particular crane,” Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri said in a statement Jan. 10.

The crane belongs to New York Crane and Equipment Corp. The same company owned cranes that crashed at two different sites on Manhattan’s East Side in March and May 2008, killing nine and injuring two dozen people.

The owner of New York Crane, James Lomma, was charged with two counts of manslaughter, two counts of criminally negligent homicide and one count each of assault and reckless endangerment for the May 2008 collapse, which killed Donald Leo, 30, and Ramadan Kurtaj, 27.

In April last year Lomma was cleared of all charges. His defense argued that operator Leo was trying to lift too heavy a load and that’s why the cable snapped. After the acquittal Leo’s family said that it gave Lomma a “license to kill.”

New York Crane is one of the biggest operators in the Northeast with some 300 cranes. The company has not responded to requests for comment.
 
 
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