The mayor said a construction crew was directing people away from the area as the crane was being lowered Friday.
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“As we get definitive information, we will provide it”, Hizzoner said at a presser conference just one block from the scene of Friday’s tragedy in Lower Manhattan.
He says residents and business owners will also be notified whenever a crane is being lowered, or moved. In such cases, construction crane engineers will be sent advisories by the Department of Buildings. The crawler crane toppled over, killing 38-year-old David Wichs and crushing a line of parked cars.
Bay Crane, of Long Island City, which owns the collapsed crane, and Galasso Trucking and Rigging Inc., of Maspeth, which operated it, did not respond to several requests Sunday for comment on the new regulations and the incident itself.
The huge construction crane was being lowered to safety in a snow squall when plummeted onto the street in the Tribeca neighborhood of lower Manhattan.
Work crews had sliced it up into dozens of pieces. Three others sustained non-life-threatening injuries when falling debris hit them. The DOT will require there be pedestrian traffic managers during projects that operate large cranes in areas that see a lot of pedestrian traffic.
“Given what happened here it is extraordinary that there was not more damage”, de Blasio said. The DOB will also conduct inspections and issue any violations when personnel are not “appropriately restricting pedestrian and vehicular traffic”. “We literally do not know yet”. The accidents fueled new safety measures, but a number of crane accidents have occurred in the city since then.
De Blasio also announced the creation of a task force to investigate crane safety in the city over the next 90 days.
The announcement is in response to Friday’s fatal crane collapse in Manhattan.
De Blasio said he could not say anything more about the cause of the collapse, as the investigation is ongoing.
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“There is no building that is worth a person’s life”, de Blasio said Sunday at the accident site. “We are going to ensure the record boom in construction and growth does not come at the expense of safety”, de Blasio said.
