A crane collapsed in downtown NY on Friday morning, killing at least one person sitting in a vehicle and injuring three pedestrians.
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Hundreds of firefighters and other emergency responders rushed to the scene after the crane fell just before 8:30 a.m. EST during a swirling snowstorm. An investigation was underway and the crane operator was being interviewed, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. A third person suffered a minor injury.
The mayor announced that he was ordering all 376 crawler cranes and 43 tower cranes registered in the city to be secured even though wind had not yet reached 25 miles per hour.
A crane collapsed in Lower Manhattan, smashing the roofs of parked cars as it crashed onto the street, authorities said.
There crane’s long boom appeared to have glanced off buildings on the way down.
“It was right outside my window”, said Robert Harold, who works at the Legal Aid Society.
“When the crane hit the ground, I heard a loud bang, it sounded like a bomb”, he said.
A manager at the company that owned the crane, Bay Crane, said the accident was being investigated and declined further comment.
Capable of lifting 330 tons, the rig had been working for about a week to replace air conditioning equipment and generators on the roof of 60 Hudson Street, a 425-foot-tall, Jazz Age skyscraper that once housed Western Union and takes up an entire block, officials said.
De Blasio said wind speeds were around 20 miles per hour when crews arrived Friday morning so a decision was made to secure the crane.
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“I couldn’t even see all the way to the other end”, Blair Steele, 29, told the New York Daily News about the downed crane.
