(Lorenzo Ciniglio)
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A giant crane knocked over by Hurricane Sandy dangled 1,000 feet above Midtown today as city officials and its owners tried to figure out how to make it safe.
“The crane is stable at this time,” said Buildings Department spokesman Tony Sclafani.
Buildings Department engineers and employees of the developer, Lend Lease, are on the site trying to figure out how to stabilize it, Sclafani said.
One possibility is securing the dangling crane boom to the structure of 157 West 57th Street, he said.
In the meantime, the city has cordoned off several blocks around the site of the 1,000-foot-tall luxury building, where apartments are selling for tens of millions of dollars.
Lend Lease, the building’s lead contractor, had no comment today. “Please contact me tomorrow in my office,” said spokeswoman Mary Costello.
Costello did not offer any other Lend Lease employees to answer questions about the crane.
No one answered the phone today at Pinnacle Industries of Harrison, which owns the crane.
The crane’s boom blew backward over its engine at about 2:30 p.m. Monday.
It could take weeks to bring down the crane and its dangling boom, said Tom Barth, a crane expert who has consulted on several recent New York City crane disasters.
“There’s no mobile crane that can take it down,” he said.
Probably, he said, a second tower crane will have to built at the site to safely remove the damaged crane. That could take weeks.
The Buildings Department has just started its investigation, and Sclafani declined comment on the accident’s cause.
bsanderson@nypost.com