City clamps down on cranes with new safety regulations BY COLIN MIXSON The city took the first steps towards tightening regulations of construction cranes and their operators on June 30, implementing several measures designed to prevent collapses like the one that claimed the life of a man in Tribeca earlier this year. The action by the Department of Buildings follows the recommendations of a crane-safety panel set up in the wake of the Feb. 5 toppling of a crawler crane on Worth St. When the Crane Safety Technical Working Group reported its findings last month, Community Board 1 called on the city to move swiftly to implement the proposed regulations before they could be diluted by pushback from the construction industry. “I’m very pleased that DOB has acted so quickly to adopt some of the recommendations from the working group,” said Jeff Ehrlich, a member of the board’s Tribeca Committee who lives on Chambers St. The new regulations were put into effect at the end of June by order of Department of Buildings Commissioner
Rick Chandler, and may be tweaked and refined over the coming weeks as they’re written into the city’s construction code, according to a spokesman for the agency. The new rules include: • Requiring mobile cranes to be fitted with wind measuring devices, called anemometers, which record real-time wind readings. • Requiring contractors to hire “onsite lift coordinators” with the authority to shutdown crane operations in the event of unsafe conditions. • Restricting mobile crane operations whenever winds exceed 30-miles per hour. • Requiring crane operators to secure cranes when not in use as per a specified “wind-action plan,” which includes retracted, jackknifed, and laiddown positions. These regulations are in addition to emergency measures taken immediately after February’s crane collapse, which included banning mobile cranes rated for 20-mph wind gusts or less
File photo by Milo Hess
Cranes Continued on page 14
The falling crane killed one person and crushed several cars parked along Worth St. on Feb. 5, prompting new regulations from the city.
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