Safety

This week one machine has dropped two seven tonne transmission towers alone. Early on Tuesday morning the Sun Bird Erickson air crane helicopter placing a tower close to a highway near San Diego in California, dropped a the load from a height of more than 70 metres. We understand that the highway was closed for the lift and no one was injured.

The Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association announces session topics for its Crane & Rigging Workshop, to be held Sept. 21-23, 2011 at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center, Philadelphia, Pa. For more information, go to the Meetings section at www.scranet.org.

A crane crashed into a house in Shoreview, Minnesota – near St Paul -yesterday after it tipped while lifting a large hot tub into the back yard. The crane, a four axle Grove truck crane owned and operated by local crane rental company Truck Crane Service Company of Eagan, Minnesota. The crane was properly set up with outrigger mats in place and all outriggers fully extended.

A crane working in Elburg, the Netherlands, dropped an old boat after the web slings broke in a similar manner to the recent accident in Ireland, where the failure of a set of slings dropped a ferry in to water.

A female crane operator was injured yesterday, suffering two broken arms and a broken leg, after the crawler crane she was operating – a vintage Link Belt- tipped over sideways trapping her in the cab.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour announced Monday its inspectors will conduct a safety blitz this month of construction sites with tower cranes, checking access and fall arrest equipment, plus inspection records and certification of operators.

Pieces of the global wind energy market are moving through Vancouver. Through July, trucks and rail cars will haul the enormous wind-energy components — including blades, generators and towers — from the Port of Vancouver to wind farms in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

The company has won two safety awards from the Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association (SC&RA). The first was the Crane & Rigging Zero Accident Award. This award is for members that complete the year without a single accident.

Working in construction sites has always been considered as hazardous. In the period between 1997 and 1999, there were 158 accidents which can be considered as crane-related. 73 percent of these crane related accidents involved mobile cranes. Of this number, 10 accidents were caused by electrical contact. This gives people the importance of electrical grounding of mobile cranes.

A new time-lapse video from London’s Olympic park shows the erection of the Arcelor/Mittal Orbit and the vast variety of cranes and work platforms used in the construction of this 115 metre high structure.