04.05.2017
Crane overturn in Michigan
An incident in Charlevoix, Michigan on Wednesday left a crawler crane in a precarious position after it overturned.
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The crane lost stability but did not overturn completely
The incident occurred at a cement plant in the town, when the Link Belt crane - operated by a contractor on the site which is currently being upgraded - lost stability while lifting a large hopper on a long main boom. The crane was also rigged with a jib and almost certainly took the load out beyond its safe radius causing an overload. It was only due to the weight of the load getting caught before the crane reached the full tipping point and perhaps the boom resting on the steelwork that saved it from coming down on the building. No injuries were reported and the crane is due to be put back onto its tracks today.
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The crane was riggeed with long boom and jib
Ed Morgan
Distressing to see standards of crane operation this poor. Seems on a daily basis a mobile crane, cherry picker, crawler, whatever ends up laid flat , often with a fatality. Is the training not up to standard in the US? If we (god forbid) topple one here in the UK then it's front-page news in the construction media yet it just seems 'normal' in the states. Worrying.
strretch67
In Canada, apprenticeship is mandatory along with mandatory technical training in most jurisdictions.
Also the fact that our laws are based on strict liabilty law your best defence is a due diligence defence. Despite what the standards and the legislation say, you must do everything reasonably pracitcable to keep people safe.
Competence is a crane owner responsibility to prove.
On top of that, if negligence can be proven after an injury or fatality then it becomes a criminal act with very stiff penalties.
Most client sites here have very strong safety programs with an onus on the contractor to provide proof of competence over and above the license.
Red
To me, one contributing factor in the epidemic of crane incidents here in the states is the change of thinking and attitudes from many years ago to the present. In the old days, youngsters were paired with experienced journeyman operators, served an apprenticeship of several years. They were taught firsthand how to drive cranes. How to set them up. How to rig. How to operate them. How to handle tricky situations.
Today, the usual procedure is take a course, pass a test, and "Voila!" You are a certified crane operator. Many times I have seen "operators" with little or no experience but who posses a fresh certificate turned loose on cranes. To me, certified does not equate to competent or qualified. The managers and supervisors seem to think a crane operator certificate covers all bases. With all these accidents, I hope they rethink that attitude.
Tristam, it seems terrible to be the other side of the pond and question WHY there are so many incidents and fatalities in the USA. Some easy research shows that there were 4,821 work site fatalities in the USA in 2016 with a population of 326 million. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
With a UK population of 65 Million, there was only 144 worksite fatalities last year. http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf
With an Australian population of 24 million, there were 178 worksite fatalities last year. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/statistics-and-research/statistics/fatalities/fatality-statistics
When you look at these statistics, the UK and their HSE organisation seems to have the lower deaths per population, and HSE reports all the prosecution.
tackb
reading some of the comments on social media I personally think it's arrogance and a cock sure attitude that is directly leading to Americas crane accident issue , with the kind of arrogance displayed it's unlikely that even more testing and training would have a significant effect until the guys actually pulling the levers accept there is an issue and are prepared to listen.
Tmayes
27th of April I challenged America to go a whole week starting this Monday 1st of May without making the news, not a hard challenge really all they had to do was keep the cranes upright. Sadly they only managed 3 days, to be fair I didn't think they would make 9am Monday morning.
The excuse on social media seems to be that they have 100 times more cranes than us in the UK so it's ok to have this amount of accidents which personally I think that's a poor attitude to take on this matter. America really does have a massive problem with cranes and it doesn't seem to be getting any better, is it down to training or is it the attitude of the industry?? How long till the next fatal accident??