Entirely preventable deaths. It's my opinion that the crane was allowed to operated unbalanced during climbing/disassembly. We don't know why it was unbalanced, but there are some clues.
Gentlemen, welcome back to the shop we've got another four men dead, construction workers, all ukraine collapse and grizzly bear third largest city in british columbia, all of 150 000 souls, but everybody needs a claim to fame other than being where nhl players go to golf in the Summer, to quote the mealy mouth on the news: ukraine, catastrophic structural failure - if in your partaking of any of these previous crane collapse vigils, you know that when a large erection such as this buckles there's more than hurt felix, i refuse to be ghoulish in this and There is a certain gallows, black humor involved with men, whose daily task involves death and dismemberment. I think it's important to respectfully engender discussion, because the people who are affected by this, the family members they want to know what the happened and very likely part of their grieving process is anger. So by disposition, if you're not capable of considered discourse, i invite you friend to right the off. We have the tower crane a jib, the counter jib with the counterweight a slew ring which allows this entire apparatus to turn around in circles.
The mast comprised of masked sections in red the hydraulic climber, which allows the entirety of the upper part of the crane to be hoisted hydraulically, listen now to the siren, sweet song of the soothing british narrator, explaining just how the procedure works. You needn't understand the entirety of the procedure, only that it is complex and absolutely critical. Firstly, the frame is climbed up to the slew ring and bolted to the p. Predetermined weight is lifted and set to the crane's balance radius.
The crane slew brakes are applied and the crane isolated. The crane driver then climbs down below the climbing frame. The master slurring assembly, bolts in the interest of brevity and copyright i'mma, give you the lowdown the crane erection ironworkers in floro orange here, move the hydraulic climbing section in red slide. It up the mast over top of the section of mast to be removed.
We set the slewing break so that the entirety of the crane cannot move. We also apply a weight to the hook, the hoisting hook, so that the crane is perfectly perfectly balanced. The balance is so critical that they have a special weight that they use with. Consequently, very low wind area, but it is critically important that they maintain the balance to such an extent that you can actually see the crane operator moved that weight on the trolley in order prior to the lift in order to get the balance absolutely perfect.
Here we see in the requisite grainy surveillance cam the crane jib normal crane jib, going ass over tea kettle with the counterweight down and the crane jib in a cloud of dust, see the length and girth of the mast of the crane it's tall, but it sure Is skinny all kind of cattywampus and at the very tippy top pins installed, the mast section is actually torn asunder and pulled over the one side you can see. The one side was in tension, the longer side and the shorter side in compression cracked right off half and two now on the ground. You see a mass section. What appears to be that first, mass section still got the slings on her fully intact. It was out of the structure when it collapsed. Here we have some cell phone footage either from the crane operator himself or someone else in the cab at the time, however, well very likely, if it was the crane operator, he's one of the deceased uh. It's interesting that how do you put it generally, you know when you're flying the plane, the rule is to fly the plane. It's interesting that these professional iron workers uh, are using that high-tech, invisalign style of hard hat and also this fella in the fluoro, also using a super expensive, invisible fall arrest as well.
It's just my opinion around the water cooler mine, multiple failures. It doesn't take much for his partner to say, hey, let's just stop here once you get your ppe on, like put your harness on, there's no reason not to well it's a pain in the ass. I got ta. Take it off.
I got ta call yes, so hook it unhook it hook it unhook it. You got two lanyards big deal. There is no hero award for saving the boss, an hour of labor in engineering. This is what's known as the normalization of deviants.
It's not normal to be up a crane without your hard hat on your strap on. It's not normal to be updating your insta while you're operating it's not normal to be hanging off the crane tied in, albeit with your slippers, on on a job site. That is not normal. In the term, normalization of deviance was coined during the follow-up to the challenger disaster, where o-rings were leaking.
It was too cold for the o-rings to function properly and the manufacturer. What brought that up got kicked out of the meetings. That is the normalization of deviance, in that you get away with it so many times that you continue to deviate from the norm and the root cause of it is poor management, and i will remind you that a fish rots from the head pisses me off, because There's four guys what died needlessly. There was a complete and utter failure of management to set the framework pun intended to make sure that these guys worked safe and what we can see from the camera footage while the guy is operating.
Is that management absolutely failed to ensure that the rules were adhered to? It's not rocket surgery.
I'll say you are 100% correct about the guys wearing the fall arrest gear, and a somewhat safe work environment. I worked on water towers for 15 years and it was one nasty job we used to climb up some of the ladders without using our gear because it took too long and too hard to click in. But these guys are just standing around. No doubt they should have their harness on. We probably weren't quite as high as these men are but we were still 200 feet and after 50 ft it doesn't matter. We used to do some pretty gnarly things that were totally illegal but we had zero guidance and or inspection for safety on water towers to this day they still operate the same way you can do whatever the hell you want. PS you don't know how many guys we have hired and they say that they're not afraid of heights lineman tree cutters Etc. But we are up very very high with not much holding you on there and these guys folded. Blasting and painting water towers is no joke. You have to have muscles in your toes and balls as big as a dump truck LOL
I can hear your anger: it's not something coming from a white collar preacher, but from someone who has been there and has worked on those sites, someone who know how damn wrong things can go for a slight slip of attention.
It is so hard to make people understand what will happen untill it happens and it's too late.
It is not Anger: it is Frustration!
Just found your channel love it and as an ironworker for over 25 years I know they were not professionals everyone thinks fast is good but forget you have to be good first then fast comes naturally I see the same thing in Ontario the only time anyone cares about safety is when someone gets hurt if you say anything they lay you off it is a tragedy for sure and I feel bad for all the families hope it's a lesson for people that need it
People need to stop using their phones while operating machinery (vehicles also apply).
Peoples theory of "i know what im doing" falls under complacency and always results in someone dieing.
Please.. put down your phone and just focus on the task you're doing.
Metal+gravity+complacency = death. Every time!
So I heard a little bit of info. Not exactly sure how accurate it is since it is third hand info and all but I have a brother in law who is a construction site supervisor in the area. Now his claim is that stemmer construction had requested a crew from the Greater Vancouver area to come and dismantle the crane but they were unavailable for 2 to 3 weeks due to a backlog in Vancouver. My brother in law suspects that the head guy from the mission group may have pressured stemmer construction to remove the crane before trained crews from the coast could arrive. Therefore stemmer construction took on the task of dismantling the crane themselves! Were they trained and qualified to perform this task? I guess that will come out in the investigation!
The other sad part is a 5th person died in this collapse that was unrelated to the construction site when parts of the falling crane came crashing through the roof of his nearby office killing him.
A lot of accidents comes down to trying to save money and rushing the project. Bolt construction was just pouring concrete with a 🏗 a couple weeks ago in an all out lightning storm in Northfield MN. It’s construction. If these people were rocket scientist they’d be working for Elon.
Used to work safety in a big manufacturing corporation. The guys on the shop floor would take any and every opportunity to not follow very well-known safety rules. Management talked about it all the time, to no avail. And firing somebody in a big company was impossible. At some point, the workers have to own their own safety and not rely on management to nag them into it.
Could it be the case this company was self-managed; a family run business; no one to oversee, no hierarchy, no boss per se? Construction sites are one of the few places left in our modern world where a sharp survival instinct is still required. The other example would be a modern battlefield.
I worked in a very well-run factory where there was a huge screen on the wall that said "XX days without an accident", and everyone was proud to let that number climb as high as possible. Here's another thing – if people are sloppy about safety then they're probably sloppy about quality too, and in the long run they both cost a lot. Just do it right, focus, be careful, that's efficiency.
I'm in construction and I hire competent adults and clearly communicate my expectation that they follow all safety regs and practices. If a worker doesn't know the safety regs, I educate and train them but if they then don't follow them, I give a warning or two for small infractions then fire them if they continue to ignore. An adult doesn't need to have their mommy hovering over them forcing compliance to safe working regs and practices and I only want self directed professionals on my job sites. Which is why I do not and will not bid union labor jobs nor will I hire a union worker. Not only are union workers lazy, they are frequently belligerent and unsafe. They blame management for their actions and screw ups. Ave, you keep blaming "management" for this incident (it doesn't appear to be an unpredictable or unforeseeable accident or equipment failure ) but the unions have high rise, crane and steel work sewn up. I'm 100% certain these guys were union workers who knew they couldn't be fired no matter how badly they fucked off sooo…they did what union workers are famous for, they fucked off. And some of them died for it. My only sorrow is for the company owners who were forced to hire these very frequently belligerent but under qualified workers and will have to pay for their unsafe working choices.
something I learned bout, working with dangerous spinny-killya machines
is that every so often when you feel yourself, being too relaxed and sure of what youre doing, you should go watch or read a report of a guy getting torn to shreds by the machine youre handling. just to put the fear of highspeed into you and make you double check the machine and yourself.