Tuesday updates at the end

The crane collapses are unrelated – said the mayor in a strong sign that he just doesn’t get it. "It would appear that there is no connection whatsoever between the two accidents," Bloomberg said

What he’s saying (incorrectly, I think) is that the immediate causes of the crane collapse and deaths on 91 Street are likely not the same immediate causes of the crane collapse on 51 Street. (While defective equipment seems to be at fault in both, there is more.)

What seems plain to some of us is that Mr. Bloomberg and his falling-down Building Department are common threads here. It is Mr. Bloomberg who gave the marching orders and funding priorities which were directed away from inspections to his (now former) Buildings Commissioner. Did she do wrong? No one I’ve talked to in the construction community thinks so. She was marching to the beat of Mr. Bloomberg’s drum.

It is Mr. Bloomberg who has to revise the do-what-you want policies in which builders self-certify compliance based on self-inspections. (A key way builders claim compliance is to get certificates from their own retained architects and engineers who – it turns out – may not be diligent or accurate. A recent, crash study by DOB found 80% of compliance reports to be inaccurate). It is Mr. Bloomberg who has to create an energized corps of building inspectors out of a group he has systematically dissed and underfunded over years. It is Mr. Bloomberg who should stop making excuses.

NY Times update here , the Daily News’ here while the Post points out that the site in question is owned by NYC which was deeply involved in all aspects of site development.

Of course, unsafe working conditions are not the property of NYC. In Bayonne NJ, two painters died from a 60 foot fall and a third was hospitalized when the scaffold on which they were painting became untethered at one end. See here and the excellent, more extensive reporting in the Newark Star Ledger by Julie O’Conner and Sharon Adarno :

The men were suspended five stories above the ground at the sprawling outdoor facility near the Bayonne waterfront about 11 a.m. when a bolt securing a cable failed and the scaffold suddenly tipped vertically, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

Henryk Wietecha, 56, of Garfield and Stanislaw Bryjak, 55, of Elmwood Park slid into a free fall as the scaffold dangled above.
Czeslaw Saniewski, 56, of Passaic was taken to Jersey City Medical Center and is expected to survive, DeFazio said.

"It is being classified at this point as an industrial accident," DeFazio said.

What do you think is accidental about the fact that none of the three were independently secured by safety harnesses to the structure? OSHA, it is said, is investigating.

Tuesday updates If you are as interested in the details of the crane collapse as I am, take a good look at the NY Times report by William Neuman & Ken Belson which follows the repairs of the cracked turntable and includes statements from the crane's insurers. Would you love a gossipy story about the crane's owner, Staten Island resident James Lomma? Click here

Also Monday workplace deaths from heights continued in NYC as a Brooklyn building washer died in a four-storey fall . Houssain Masharrf, 50, was not wearing a safety harness. There was no licensed rigger overseeing the scaffold from which he fell. I have not yet looked up the name of the building owner who, presumably, arranged for all this, but stay tuned. I am curious whether DOB will begin to take outer borough enforcement more seriously.

Finally, those of us as completely committed to misspelling as I have no business correcting the spelling of others. But -- story and storey (plurals: stories and storeys) are different words, as I see it. The first a tale, the second a level of a building.

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