NEW YORK — A massive crane collapsed onto a row of cars in the TriBeCa section of Lower Manhattan Friday morning, killing one person and injuring three others.
Reports of the fallen crane at 40 Worth St., near Church Street, came in just before 8:30 a.m. Friday and happened at the height of the busy morning commute as snow fell. The crane also damaged four buildings, including the New York Law building, as it smashed onto the narrow street.
One person sitting in a parked car along Worth Street was crushed to death by the crane, and three others were injured by falling debris.
“I was walking my children to school when we heard a noise. It sounded like an earthquake,” a woman told WPIX.
“We had seen the crane the night before as kind of dangling already,” said the witness, who was concerned about the crane even before the collapse happened. “I’m not lucky/ I am aware. I look at things. I look up.”
Two seriously injured people were rushed to New York Presbyterian Hospital and Bellevue Hospital. Another person suffered minor injuries.
“I lost it. I absolutely lost it,” said witness Sara Holoubek, on her reaction to the collapse. She had an incredibly close call.
“I realized I had just walked under the crane,” she said. “You realize how good it is to be alive.”
“It looked scary from day one,” said Jaime Gee, who works on the corner of Worth Street and Broadway. “Watching them hauling the cooling towers with these tiny cables was nerve wrecking (sic). It was just a matter to time before it came down.”
It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse of the crane. When it fell, the crane was being placed in a safe position as a precaution because of high winds, according to Mayor Bill de Bill Blasio. The crane belongs to the Bay Crane company but was being operated by Galasso, a construction company based in Maspeth.
“This was a company who was putting their crane into a secure position the way we would have wanted them to,” said de Blasio, who noted that the safety protocol had been mandated after two deadly crane collapses in 2008.
The type of crane is a crawler, and had a boom length of 565 feet – the maximum allowed, and a capacity of 330 tons. The company had recently asked for an extension in order to access the rooftops, according to city officials.
At 6:20 a.m. Thursday, Department of Buildings representatives inspected the crane. Workers were using the crane to replace generators and air conditioning units at 60 Hudson Street.
