1 dead, 3 injured in massive crane collapse in NYC

NEW YORK — A pedestrian was killed and three people were injured Friday when a huge construction crane collapsed in lower Manhattan as workers were trying to lower and secure it against rising winds, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Pronounced dead at the scene was 38-year-old David Wichs, of Manhattan's Upper West Side, the New York City Police Department said. The injured, whose names were not immediately released, were hit by falling debris, authorities said. Two were listed in serious condition.

The mayor initially said the person killed had been sitting in a car, but the police later said he had been walking near a car.

The Daily News reported that one of the injured, Thomas O'Brien, 73, was in the nearby car waiting for his daughter when the heavy metal crushed much of the vehicle. O'Brien received a head laceration.

The crane, with a 565-foot boom that stretched roughly as long as a city block, plummeted around 8:24 a.m. EST near 40 Worth Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood, the New York City Fire Department said.

Jesse Natale, a 26-year-old civil engineer from Westfield, N.J., told the Daily News he was waiting at a traffic light at the site when the crane came down.

“If I caught that light, I’d be dead probably,” he said. “It looked like an avalanche — or that the roof was caving in from the snow.”

Twisted red-colored metal from the plunging boom smashed into parked cars and debris littered streets and sidewalks. More than 100 firefighters and emergency personnel and more than 30 firetrucks and other equipment responded to the scene.

City officials said utility workers were taking gas readings in the area and making plans to excavate and cap a low-pressure gas main in the wake of the collapse.

De Blasio said construction work was halted on the building Thursday after operators decided to lower and secure the crane against winds, which at times gusted between 20-25 mph.

“They were in the process of securing the crane ... actually preparing to bring it down, to secure it,” he said.

De Blasio said there likely would have been more victims if workmen hadn't already cleared the area of traffic and people to prepare for lowering the crane. "Thank God we didn’t have more injuries and lose more people,” de Blasio said. “It’s something of a miracle that there was not more of an impact.”

Glenn Zito, who was working on the upper floors of a building across the street, captured the crane's collapse in a dramatic video. Zito and two other workers were asked to come down from the upper floors because of the wind and were making their way down when they stopped to watch the crane being lowered.

"At a certain point (as) it was coming down, it was probably at 90 degrees, the two halves, and then it just sped up," Zito said. "And at that point we watched it fall and then the body of the cab of the crane flipped over.”

Zito pans the camera from left to right and follows the metal boom as it plummets to the ground and lands in a heap in the middle of the road.

"You always think it’s going to be a possibility," said Chris Andrinopouls, another workman. "You really don’t want that to happen."

A few wind gusts of 20-25 mph were reported between 8 and 9 a.m. Friday in Manhattan, according to data from Weather Underground.

The equipment that collapsed is known as a crawler crane, which consists of an upper carriage, or boom, mounted on a crawler-type undercarriage that can be moved from one location to another. The boom is capable of hoisting 330 tons of weight, city officials said.

City Department of Buildings inspectors checked the crane Thursday morning, when workers installed an extension on the upper boom. The inspectors approved the operation, de Blasio and other city officials said.

The city issued orders for all crawler cranes across the city to be secured as investigators tried to determine the cause of Friday’s accident. It was the city’s first major crane collapse since 2008.

De Blasio pushed back against media questions about previous construction accidents, saying there had been no epidemic of such incidents. However, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said municipal buildings officials had failed to implement many recommendations in a 2014 audit on construction crane safety.

Contributing: Michael Struening in New York City. Stanglin reported from McLean, Va.