1980 and Earlier Australia

I ran across a forum at Skyscraper City that has a number of old accident pictures in it. For the most part I don't have dates or much information. The pictures are interesting nonetheless. So I thought that I would throw them up all in one post and note that it comes from that forum so you could dig in to the forum if you like and see how the Aussie Crane Operators love their Favco's. They almost reminisce about each crane by serial #. I'll put up a link to the source for the photos and you will be able to see a larger format at the source than on my blog.

Listed as St Kilda Road, this accident is with a crane that is well before my time. It appears to be a early Luffer that could date back to the 50's. It seems to have lost stability at the base. It may have the record for the most cars gotten in one accident! Link

If you haven't seen a GCI before, you should check them out. They set up in 20 minutes, come self contained with motors instead of needing 480v 3 phase power, and have capacities up to 60,000 lbs! They also had fixed jibs available or lattice conversions for greater capacities. Manitowoc still has a spec sheet available here. The claim in the forum was that they crane was swinging too fast with to large of a load. I'm not sure if that means that it was torsionally overloaded or the stopping of the load caused the load to swing so far out of line with the counterweights that they were ineffective. Large picture Link

More Accidents after the Jump 

This Favco is listed as having been on the Gold Coast. It would seem that we have tie-in failures here. If you look at the failure points you'll see that the collars have collapsed in the towers. I don't have any experience with Favco's. The last one up in Seattle was around 30 years ago. What I'm reminded of is internal bracing. The collars are squeezing in on the towers. What you are generally required to have is internal added bracing to resist this squeezing and potential collapse. The picture shows why, but this may not be the cause of this accident as I have no idea if they are required on those giant and heavy Favco towers. The operator survived this accident as his cab came to a rest just before the cab struck the ground. Large Picture link

In Adelaide a Favco fell nearly perfectly between two buildings. The story as told in the forum was that the bolts from the climbing frame to the turntable were removed at the end of work Friday after climbing the crane down. The assumed plan was that the crane was going to be dismantled and not used again. The operator not knowing that the bolts were removed went to operate the crane when it simply fell off of the mast. A rigger was injured in the accident but was able to carry on with his career. Link 1, 2

There are other great photos at the forum that many crane geeks can enjoy. Even a ringer boom being blown off the ring. Go check it out!