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One dead, three injured in massive crane collapse

NY has had recent crane collapses.

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A crane collapsed in lower Manhattan Friday morning, smashing parked cars. Had a cable broken, the crane would have collapsed much faster than it did, Pritchett said.

The recipients included the Yeshiva of Flatbush, which had welcomed Wichs as a 14-year-old from Prague who barely spoke English and knew no Hebrew.

The crane cab was on Worth between West Broadway and Hudson; the boom fell across West Broadway – blocking the intersection when it came down onto the slush-covered blacktop. Debris littered the street. Mayor Bill de Blasio was expected to hold a press conference later on Friday.

“There were very high, gusty winds, and that’s the primary factor in the collapse” according to a source familiar with the investigation.

City officials say it could take weeks to determine why the crane collapsed while it was being lowered during strong winds. He took each and every opportunity which he could find. They said work crews will soon begin cutting the downed crane into as many as 35 pieces, then trucking them away.

Wichs’ widow, Rebecca Guttman, called her pain “unbearable”.

A City Hall spokesman later clarified that de Blasio was referring to fatal crane collapses involving sites under the jurisdiction of the buildings department. Two of the three bystanders injured were hospitalized in critical condition. The city issued an emergency alert for people to avoid the area and to allow for additional travel time in Lower Manhattan. The nearby New York Law School evacuated its campus and canceled classes until Monday. There are reports that people are trapped. Two received serious but not life-threating injuries. “I hope there will be, but many people want to leave the country and there are not so many of us”.

In May, a construction crane cable snapped at a high-rise office building in midtown Manhattan as it was lifting an air conditioning unit to the top of the structure, sending the unit plunging almost 30 stories. Several parked cars were crushed in the mishap and the crane is still blocking streets.

The accident happened as workers were trying to secure the mobile crane against winds around 20 miles per hour by lowering the boom, which had been extended to as long as 565 feet the day before, officials said. The crane’s owner, Bay Crane, also declined comment.

A crane bearing the company’s name was overturned at the scene of Friday morning’s collapse. The third suffered minor injuries. One man was killed and two other were injured in the accident.

It happened about 8:25 a.m., fire officials told WNBC.

Further details were not immediately known.

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The husband of a pilot who was involved in a midair collision that sent at least one plane plunging into the ocean near the Port of Los Angeles says he believes she did not survive the accident. The FDNY is on the scene, and pinpoints the address of the collapse as 40 Worth Street.

Huge construction crane collapses in Manhattan one killed