12.11.2015
Crane crushes toilet
A crawler crane overturned yesterday on a job site in East Lansing, Michigan while placing concrete with boom and fixed jib.
It looks as though the crane, working over the side and looks as though the loaded track may have been partly on a kerb and partly on soft ground and working close or beyond the edge of its stability limits, when some minor shifting caused it to go over.
The crane boom and jib came down on portable toilet, an excavator and the boundary fence. We assume that the toilet was unoccupied at the time, as no one was hurt in the incident, Although one man on site was shaken up and taken to hospital for a routine check.
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The overturned crane with damaged toilet
A spokesman for the developer, DTN Management, said: “the crane’s internal load balancers appear to have stopped working. The crane appears undamaged, but it may be one to two days before the crane’s balancers are repaired and construction can continue”. We are not at all sure what he meant by ‘internal load balancers’ unless he meant they had left some carbody counterweight off?
The crane's owner - concrete contractor Kent Companies - managed to raise the crane’s boom and get the machine safely back on its tracks within a few hours.
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Back on its tracks
They sure build these blue plastic portable toilets tough in the USA. Pity about building the cranes "internal load balancers" tough.
But on a lighter note, I am sure that anyone using the toilet at the same time has their "internal Load Balancer" well and truly fixed.
On a serious note: The sooner that the full crane load management systems with un-tamperable devices (and category 3 and 4 switching) is fitted to all new Cranes, and existing high risk cranes, the safer it will be for users and persons in the vicinity.
I am sure that this comment will create an outcry, but in a 1st world industrialised country such as the USA, it is time for a change.
Tmayes
Can anybody tell me what a internal load balancer is??