Crane Collapses on Upper East Side, Killing 1

By Sewell Chan

Updated, 9:44 a.m. | A crane being used at a construction site toppled over and crashed into another building at East 91st Street and First Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan moments after 8 a.m. on Friday, according to witnesses and officials. Scores of Fire Department trucks and emergency medical workers responded to the scene. At least two people were pulled out of the wreckage.

A law enforcement official confirmed that at least one person, the cab operator, was killed in the collapse. “The crane operator is the only confirmed dead at this time,” the official said. “He was still in the cab of the crane” when it came down, the official added.

The official did not have immediate information on the second person said to be most seriously — or even perhaps fatally — injured.

The crane’s top piece apparently broke off, the official said. “It’s a confirmed crane collapse,” the official said. “It snapped at some point along the crane and stuck a building on the other side of 91st Street and First Avenue.” The official said the crane was working on a “new construction” site on one corner of East 91st and First and that when it broke, the broken piece cascaded down and fell into a building on the other side of the street.

The Fire Department got the first 911 call at 8:06 a.m., with the caller saying a “crane was down,” said Firefighter Chris Villarroel, a spokesman.

He said units rushed to the scene and found the wreckage. “We pulled out two people,” said Mr. Villarroel. “We don’t know their condition.” It was unclear immediately if those rescued were construction worker or pedestrians in the street or in the building.

First Avenue has been closed to traffic between 86th and 96th Streets. Vehicles traveling between 79th and 86th Streets may not turn on to First Avenue. On East 91st Street, traffic has been closed between York and Second Avenues. “All side streets in the general area are subject to closure,” the Police Department said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported that several bus lines — the M15, M31, M86 and the X90 — have been rerouted because of the accident.

New York 1 reported that the building under construction was the Azure, a high-rise condominium tower at 333 East 91st Street; about 12 of the 34 planned stories have been completed. The crane apparently crashed into a white-brick apartment building at 1749 First Avenue, which houses a Duane Reade drug store on the ground floor.

According to city records, the company that is building the Azure is the Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corporation of Elmont, on Long Island. A call to the sales office of 1765 First Associates L.L.C., a subsidiary of DeMatteis, was not immediately returned.

Joe Quinn, 25, a member of a lathers union, had started work at 7 a.m. as part of a crew of about 25 workers on the roof of the building when the accident occurred. The turntable, which was attaching the crane to the tower, “came right off,” Mr. Quinn said in an interview “Boom. There was no weight on it. It boomed up, then just boom! There was no load on it. It wasn’t hooked up to anything. The disk came off where it attaches to the tower.”

After the crane fell, “I ran like hell,” Mr. Quinn said. He used ladders and stairs to get down from the roof.

City records show that the building has been the subject of several complaints from residents who have called the city’s 311 hot line. On May 20, a caller complained about the crane, saying that its platform extended across the sidewalk and well into traffic. A Buildings Department inspector responded but determined there was no violation.

Bolivar Quiroz, 56, a construction worker who was standing and 92nd Street and First Avenue, said it sounded “like a bomb was crashing.” “We were standing outside working, and we ran outside because we heard the noise,” he said. He and his colleagues looked toward where the crash occurred. “I saw, at the fourth or fifth floor, a support, but they’re supposed to have another support just above that and they didn’t. We looked and the crane was wavering back and forth.”

Caitlin Reeves, 25, who lives in a corner apartment on the 10th floor of the Electra building with two roommates, said she was in her bathroom brushing her teeth when she felt and heard an enormous rumble shoot through her apartment – the effects of the crane shearing off her balcony.

“I turned around and ran into my room and there were pieces of the wall and debris everywhere,” she said. “Then I turned around and yelled at my roommates to get out.”

One of her roommates, Hadley Jensen, 23, said she felt a rush of emotions as the building shifted.

“I’m from L.A. so I assumed it was an earthquake,” she said. “It sounded like there was a huge crash on First Avenue, but then we felt something shaking the bottom of the building.”

As remnants of the crane continued to rain down on the street, the three girls fled their apartment and bounded down ten flights of stairs to their dust-filled lobby, where dozens of residents were shouting and sobbing as they streamed out onto 91st street and ran for their lives. Ms. Reeves said the building was mostly occupied by families with small children, including at least four on her floor alone. Like many people on the street, she said the sight of the crane towering over her building each day gave her an uneasy feeling.

“Every morning I woke up and I could see the top of that crane pivoting and I kept thinking we’d be lucky to make it out of that apartment without it careening into us,” she said.

A 57-year-old woman who would only give her name as Anna R., who said she lived at 1771-1773 First Avenue, a small prewar building adjacent to the construction site, said, “I’m so glad the crane went the other way. My building would have been gone because they’re so old.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a previously scheduled on-air interview on WOR-AM, said, “We’re not going to tolerate any rate of accidents any higher than it has to be.” He did not appear to have been fully briefed on the details of this morning’s accident. “We’re not going to stall,” he vowed. But he added, “It may just be a piece of steel breaks and there’s nothing you could ever have done about it.”

The accident occurred only two months after a tower crane collapsed on East 51st Street between Second and First Avenues, killing seven people. The city’s buildings commissioner was forced out of her job and an extensive review of the city’s cranes was conducted in the aftermath of that accident, one of the worst construction disasters in the city’s recent history.

According to Jeff Simmons, spokesman for the New York City comptroller’s office, which tracks claims filed against the city, since the last crane collapse, 21 claims have been filed with the office, requesting $366.3 million in total and citing personal injury, property damage or wrongful death. Claimants have 90 days from the date of an incident to file a claim against the city.

The New York Times is interested in reader photos of the accident; such photos should be e-mailed to cityroom.nyt@gmail.com.

Al Baker, Jennifer Mascia and Margot Williams contributed reporting.

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* Buildings and Landmarks, accidents, construction, cranes, Upper East Side

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