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Mar 18, 2008 8:50 am US/Eastern
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Officials Plan Crane Inspections After NYC Tragedy
7 Dead At East Side Collapse Site
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
Another body was pulled from the rubble Monday at the site of Saturday's sudden crane collapse in Manhattan, raising the death toll to 7. Amid the tragedy, the Department of Buildings is promising to inspect crane towers around the city.
About 250 cranes operate in the city on any given day, and Mayor Bloomberg said the accident shouldn't alarm New Yorkers living near high-rise construction sites. "This is a very tragic but also a very rare occurrence," he said.
But neighborhood residents and a Manhattan borough official raised concerns about city inspections at the apartment tower.
Board member Lou Seperdky said, "The biggest question is why the building department has not been able to maintain a satisfactory level of inspection."
Retired ironworker Kerry Walker, who with his wife lived in the top-floor apartment of the four-story town house and left minutes before the collapse, had complained that the crane appeared dangerously unstable, his stepson said.
"He knows all about cranes and said this one had no braces, everything was too minimal," John Viscardi said. "He told one friend on the phone that 'if you don't hear from me, it's because the crane fell on my house."'
Six construction workers and a woman in town from MIami for St. Patrick's Day were killed Saturday when the crane broke away from an apartment tower under construction and toppled like a tree onto buildings as far as a block away. The last three bodies were found Monday.
Tourist Odin Torres, 28, 37-year-old construction worker Santino Gallone and his co-worker, 45-year-old Clifford Canzona were among the victims found in the wreckage Monday.
The seventh and final victim has been identified as construction worker Brad Cohen of Farmingdale.
A preliminary investigation found that the crane toppled when a steel collar used to tie the crane to the side of the building fell as workers attempted to install it, damaging a lower steel collar that supported the crane. With the elimination of that support, the counter-weights at the top of the crane's tower caused it to fall, investigators said.
As rescue workers continued to dig through the rubble, the neighborhood just blocks from the U.N. struggled to return to normal. One lane of Second Avenue reopened to traffic, and many stores and bars were open for business.
The manager of an Irish bar noted how fortunate it was that the accident didn't happen Monday, when hundreds of thousands of people thronged nearby Fifth Avenue for the annual St. Patrick's Day parade.
"If it happened today there would be carnage," said Jamison's Pub manager Michael Mullooly, referring to the half dozen or so Irish bars in the neighborhood that typically attract large crowds on St. Patrick's Day.
Two people -- a woman and a construction worker -- were believed to be inside the four-story brick town house that was completely demolished when the crane came crashing down. The blocks around the construction site consist mostly of low-rise residential buildings but in recent years developers have erected a number of big condo towers, sparking concerns among residents about the pace of development.
The once missing woman had come from Miami to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and to visit a friend who lived in the town house, said John LaGreco, owner of Fubar, a saloon on the ground floor of the town house. The woman was in her friend's second-floor apartment at the time of the accident and hasn't been heard from since, he said. Her friend was rescued.
Twenty-four others were injured, including 11 first responders, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Eight people remained hospitalized, officials said.
Officials were investigating whether human or mechanical error led to the construction-site accident, which the mayor described as among the city's worst. City officials said the broken crane passed inspection Friday.
The accident occurred while workers were adding tower sections to extend the crane upwards, an operation known as "jumping" the crane, according to investigators with the Office of Emergency Management.
While crews were jumping the crane to the 18th floor, the steel collar, which wrapped around the mast of the crane and is used to tie the crane to the side of the building, fell as workers attempted to install it.
When the steel collar fell, it damaged a lower steel collar, installed at the 9th floor. The collar installed at the 9th floor served as a major anchor securing the tower crane to the building under construction.
With the elimination of the support provided by the steel collar at the 9th floor, the counter-weights at the top of the crane's tower caused the entire crane to topple southward.
The city had answered 38 complaints and issued more than a dozen violations in the past 27 months to the construction site where the 43-story high-rise condominium was going up. None of the violations was related to the crane, Bloomberg said.
On Sunday, the Reliance Construction Group, the project's contractor, released a statement expressing sympathy to the families of the dead and injured and said it was cooperating with government investigators.
Four of the workers killed in the accident were identified as Wayne Bleidner, 51, of Pelham; Brad Cohen, 54, of Farmingdale; Anthony Mazza, 39; and Aaron Stephens, 45, of New York City, police said Sunday. The two people whose bodies were found Monday had not yet been identified.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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