Another crane has collapsed in NYC. This is the second crane to collapse in the past several months, and this one is even closer to my house.
Yikes. I would say that I would never walk under these things, but it is kind of impossible.
More like this
They used to hunt whooping cranes. Between that and habitat loss, the number dropped from nearly 20,0000 to a mere 1,400 during the first half of the 19th century, and continued to drop to an all time low of 15 birds in 1941.
Fifteen birds, in 1941, represented the entire species.
The Houston Chronicle has reporters covering the devastating crane collapse which occurred on Friday, July 18 at 1:20 pm local time. The crane was owned and operated by Deep South Crane & Rigging
Earlier today, OSHA published its long-awaited final rule on cranes and derricks in construction.
I have a new post up at 10,000 Birds: How much bird is there, anyway? Please have a look and leave a comment!
I note the typical mayoral grandstanding as Bloomberg immediately pronounces the incident "unacceptable and intolerable" (that's what mayors are supposed to say), but you can't make that judgement before you know what happened. That reaction is coming from the very widespread fallacy that engineering should be able to achieve zero accidents. Sure, probably carelessness and greed were the main causes of the accident, but maybe not, you don't know yet. There will never be such a thing as no accidents at all.