Safety Scrutinized After Crane Tragedy

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NEW YORK CITY-Onlookers crowded with their cell phones to snap pictures of another construction accident on Friday morning, this time on the Upper East Side. Police tape, barricades and myriad emergency vehicles created a one to two block radius around the corner of 1st Avenue and East 91st Street, where the boom of a crane, working at 333 91st St., toppled to the ground, hitting a parallel building, just after 8 a.m. The collapse, which killed two construction workers and injured another, raises construction safety concerns here for the second time this year.

March 15, as GlobeSt.com previously reported, a crane collapsed at East 51st Street and Second Avenue, killing seven. At the time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged the danger of high-rise construction, but said residents near cranes were generally safe. That incident led to the resignation of Patricia Lancaster, the city’s buildings commissioner, and raised concerns over whether or not the DOB has been doing everything in their power to keep sites safe.

Charles Brady, director of capital goods equity research at BMO Capital Markets, tells GlobeSt.com that it’s difficult to pin down a specific answer as far as who is accountable when an accident like this happens, and it is also difficult to tell whether or not rules and regulations are being enforced, as they vary by jurisdiction. “The ones that are most likely to get blamed are going to be whoever is erecting the crane. Unless there was something deficient in the crane itself, you wouldn’t look to the crane manufacturers,” he says. “It would be highly unlikely that it would be a manufacturer.”