By Gabriel Rom
Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced emergency regulations after a crane owned and operated by two Queens companies crashed in Lower Manhattan last Friday morning, killing a 38-year-old man and injuring three others.
The crane was owned by Bay Crane of Long Island City and operated by Galasso Trucking and Rigging Inc. of Maspeth. Neither company could be reached for comment.
In May 2015 Bay Crane was involved in another accident when a massive air-conditioning unit being lifted by a crane in Midtown Manhattan fell about 28 stories, injuring 10 people.
Crawler cranes like the one involved in last Friday’s crash will now have to be removed from operation and properly secured whenever winds are expected to exceed 20 miles per hour or gusts exceed 30 mph, the mayor said Sunday.
Crane companies that don’t comply, de Blasio announced, may face fines of up to $10,000, more than a 50 percent increase from the previous fines.
The city also plans to ramp up enforcement of street and sidewalk closures due to crane activity. Cops, firefighters and officials from the departments of Buildings and Transportation will be ordered to keep pedestrians out.
Crane operators will also now be required to notify people who live and work in the area when a crane is moved. The only notification currently required is when a crane is installed. The city will also form a task force on crane safety to develop additional regulations.
“We all know there is a construction boom going on in our city, and although we value the work that’s being done … nothing is more important than the safety of our people,” de Blasio said, standing near the site of the collapse on Worth Street on Sunday. “There is no building that is worth a person’s life.”
A few miles north David Wichs was being remembered on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Wichs, who immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia as a teenager was remembered by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein as a “supreme mensch in every respect.”
Investigators are still working to determine the cause of the collapse.
“We just checked the history. This is the first crane collapse in the city since 2008,” de Blasio said at the press conference.
In May 2008 the horizontal arm of a 240-foot crane snapped off, launching the cab and upper portion of the arm into a building on 91st Street and First Avenue. The crane’s operator, Donald C. Leo, and a construction worker, Ramadan Kurtaj, were both killed. James Lomma, the owner of Maspeth-based New York Crane & Equipment Co., was acquitted of criminal charges but will have to pay over $96 million in total damages to the families of two victims.
But in addition to the 2008 and 2015 crane accidents, a crane owned by another company fell off a luxury 57th Street skyscraper in 2012.
Reach reporter Gabriel Rom by e-mail at grom@
