As cranes have grown in height and girth, the controls to operate them have intensified in number and complexity. But added complexity also means that more can go wrong. Now, ever-growing cranes must serve multiple purposes, transform into differing configurations to handle varying work conditions, and provide a new level of sophistication on our country's job sites, whether they're working on moving heavy trusses to high-rises in a city or shuttling high-tech equipment into a shorter, more expansive project in a different location. New York alone has more than 350 crawler cranes plus more than 50 of the high-flying fixed tower cranes.Ĭranes can do more. No longer are smaller mobile cranes asked to do one job. World Trade Center 1, 2 ,3, and 4, Museum and Memorial, Reflecting Pool,Transit Hub construction Site, New York City. But consider that as recently as a few decades ago, cranes-especially the mobile cranes that now dominate the sphere-were much simpler machines. This sounds like a blanket indictment of crane operators. It will do everything the manufacturer says it will do, but it has to be run and maintained (properly)." Tom Barth, owner of Barth Crane Inspections of South Carolina, echoes that statement, saying operator error lies at the root of most crane collapses. But here's the thing: "I come across people all the time that are operating these cranes and using the mindset that it works as one back in the 1990s worked," he says. "We are in an age where we have extremely sophisticated equipment," James Pritchett, president of Alabama-based Crane Experts International, tells Popular Mechanics. So why does this keep happening? Web of Complexity It's a recipe for danger if crews aren't exceedingly careful. Such events highlight the awesome and scary power of cranes, especially in dense urban areas where these ever-growing machines (record-holders now stand more than 300 feet tall, telescoping to more than 500 feet) work right next to pedestrians and drivers. Some of the largest crane collapses on record have the most devastating effects in big cities, such as a 2008 New York accident that killed seven people and destroyed buildings when a 200-foot-tall crane collapsed. The fact is, though, that deadly crane crashes are far too common.
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