17.06.2021

Big crawler collapse

We have been sent news and a video of the large, fully rigged crawler crane that overturned in a reportedly violent storm at an LNG plant on Tuesday in south Louisiana, US.

The crane was one of several rigs working on Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG facility in Cameron Parish - due south of Lake Charles. It was rigged with a long main boom, derrick boom/back mast and topped by a long luffing jib. At the time the site reported a sudden arrival of a severe storm with high wind gusts, the crane was facing into the wind with what looks like a fully elevated boom and high jib angle, which caused the jib to blow back over the rear resulting in the main boom buckling. Amazingly, in spite of the area covered by such a long boom coming down, only one person was injured in the incident. They were taken to hospital and treated for "non-life threatening injuries".



A statement from the site said: “This afternoon during a sudden severe weather event a crane was damaged at Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass facility. An individual was injured during the incident and was taken to the hospital for evaluation and observation in accordance with site safety protocols. Their injuries are not life threatening. There were no other impacts to the site as a result of this event.”

We will update this item if and when we receive further information.

Vertikal Comment

This is another example of the importance of good out of service protocols when storms or strong winds are expected, note the other cranes in the video. We do not know of course how sudden and unexpected the storm was - but a seasoned and experienced operator with full knowledge of the manufacturers out of service protocols would almost certainly have avoided this happening - we must be thankful that it was not much much worse.