01.03.2016
Two tower crane falls in France
A tower crane collapsed on a job site near Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire on the south side of Nantes, France, on Thursday injuring the crane operator and another man on site.
The crane, owned and operated by construction company Le Feunteun, overturned over the rear from its free standing base while lifting a two tonne skip of concrete, our local source says that the hoist cable snapped causing the crane to flip over rearwards. The operator was thrown from his cab and miraculously survived the 30 metre fall suffering little more than a broken arm.
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The overturned crane in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire
In a statement Le Feunteun chief executive Kevin Le Feunteun said that the crane was of a recent vintage and had been fully inspected and tested when work began at the residential site six months ago. He also confirmed that a cable had snapped and claimed that the capacity of the crane at the radius it was working at was around six tonnes.
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Surveying the wreckage in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire
The second person injured was a truck driver which suffered an injury to his hand, after his vehicle was struck by the falling crane.
This incident follows a similar one that occurred in the region on February 5th when a free standing tower crane overturned in Bréal-sous-Montfort near Rennes - north of Nantes. The falling crane fell across a building and a scaffold walkway, a construction worker on the staging managed to jump clear of the falling crane, but fell from a height of around three metres inflicting minor injuries to his arms. No one else was hurt in the incident.
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The tower crane overturn in Bréal-sous-Montfort
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As with the other incident this one overturned from the free standing base
Agree on both counts crane instructor hoist cable should have had so much safety factor left it can handle six tons that even half rotten it should have managed the load
A hoist cable don't snap when it is in good condition and a tower crane don't make a back flip when it is being well set up. Question is what the root cause is of this accident... The smallest injury is one too much but I am glad that the operator is still alive.