NY Times report on the UES Crane Collapse ...

Thanks for everyone's concern and all the phone calls. Everyone in our family is safe. Prayers go out to those who died or were injured in this disaster.

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At Least One Killed by Crane Collapse in Manhattan

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

A crane toppled and collapsed onto a high-rise apartment building on East 91st Street on the Upper East Side on Friday morning, tearing off balconies and raining broken brick and shattered glass onto the street below, in the second Manhattan crane collapse in two months. At least one person, the operator of the crane, who was sitting in the cab as the structure fell, was killed, officials said.

At least two others were injured and taken to local hospitals, according to a fire department spokesman.

The crane, which was apparently being used for a construction project at 354 East 91st Street, snapped apart moments after 8 a.m., sending the top piece onto the white-brick residential building at the southwest corner of 91st Street and First Avenue.

The cab of the crane smashed into the top floor of the building, about 20 stories up, and cascaded down the north facade, knocking off balconies and leaving a swath of pockmarks down to a Duane Reade drug store, which sits on the building’s ground floor.

One person died at the scene; the other was taken to Metropolitan Hospital and died there, according to the police.

The accident occurred just two months after a tower crane collapsed on East 51st Street between Second and First Avenues, killing seven people and prompting an extensive review of the safety of the city’s cranes.

Just this week, city officials said they would no longer require inspectors to be on hand at construction sites when a crane is erected or made taller, ending a policy put in place after the Midtown accident. The Buildings Department said on Wednesday that it would switch to a system of spot checks and “safety meetings” where workers would be briefed on proper procedures.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking Friday morning in a previously scheduled radio interview, said the accident “is just unacceptable and we’ve got to figure out what happened here.”

“The construction industry obviously and real estate developers, they don’t want you to shut it down,” the mayor said, though he did not appear to have been fully briefed on the details of Friday morning’s accident. “But the bottom line is, number one is public safety, and we’re not going to tolerate any rate of accidents any higher than it has to be.”

The wreckage from the crane lay in the intersection, where a camp of ambulances, fire trucks and police personnel sprang up minutes afterward. Traffic was blocked off for 20 blocks around the accident. Some residents of the building peeked their heads out from windows to survey the damage.

Caitlin Reeves, 25, who lives in a corner apartment on the 10th floor of the damaged building, said she was in her bathroom brushing her teeth when she felt and heard an enormous rumble shoot through her apartment — the effects of the broken crane shearing off her balcony.

“I turned around and ran into my room and there were pieces of the wall and debris everywhere,” she said. “Then I turned around and yelled at my roommates to get out.”

One of her roommates, Hadley Jensen, a 23-year-old Los Angeles native, said she assumed the sound stemmed from an earthquake. “It sounded like there was a huge crash on 1st Avenue, but then we felt something shaking the bottom of the building,” she said.

As remnants of the crane continued to rain down on the street, the women fled their apartment and bounded down 10 flights of stairs to their dust-filled lobby, where dozens of residents were shouting and sobbing as they streamed out onto 91st Street. Ms. Reeves said the building was mostly occupied by families with small children. Like other residents interviewed on the street, she said the sight of the crane towering over her building each day gave her an uneasy feeling.

“Every morning I woke up and I could see the top of that crane pivoting and I kept thinking we’d be lucky to make it out of that apartment without it careening into us,” she said.

The building under construction was the Azure, a high-rise condominium tower; about 12 of the 34 planned stories had been completed. According to city records, the company that is building the Azure is the Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corporation of Elmont, on Long Island.

The Fire Department received the first 911 call about the collapse at 8:06 a.m., with the caller saying a “crane was down,” said firefighter Chris Villarroel. He said units rushed to the scene and found the wreckage.” We pulled out two people,” said Mr. Villarroel. “We don’t know their condition.”

It was unclear immediately if those rescued were construction worker or pedestrians in the street or in the building.

Al Baker, Carla Baranauckas, Sewell Chan, Michael S. Schmidt and Anahad O’Connor contributed reporting.