Some workers in New York’s construction industry still haven’t gotten the message about crane safety.
They tried to move a barge crane with a raised boom beneath the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday. The maneuver went badly – the crane’s raised boom ripped apart a section of a work platform hung beneath the bridge, along with the platform’s safety netting.
At high tide, the high point of the Brooklyn Bridge’s underside is 135 feet above the East River.
The crane barge and tugboat operators should have known that – after the bridge opened in 1883, its 135-foot clearance became standard for bridges over shipping channels.
No one was injured in the 7:30 a.m. incident, which one crane industry expert said at least demonstrated “poor planning” on the part of the tugboat operator and anyone else involved.
It’s unusual for a barge crane to be moved with the crane’s boom extended, this expert said.
The tugboat company, Weeks Marine of New Jersey, did not return several calls for comment.
No work was being performed on the under-bridge platform when the crane ripped it apart, a city Department of Transportation spokesman said.
After the incident, Weeks moved the crane barge and the 70-foot-long tugboat Virginia to the Greenville Yard docks in Jersey City. DOT officials briefly closed one Brooklyn-bound vehicle lane on the bridge, but reports said the incident did not slow traffic much.
Coast Guard officials were investigating the incident yesterday.
Besides the work platform and the safety netting, the crane boom also struck the bridge’s wind-bracing cables.
Additional reporting by Irene Plagianos