How the Seattle crane collapse happened

Brian Haight, Washington State L&I crane certification supervisor, explains what led up to a deadly crane collapse in Seattle in April 2019.

[MeanT]

Me: "Ah, volume is low. Better turn it way up"

0:27: "...AND THE MOBILE CRANE OPERATOR!!"
😳

[earlwarren]

AvE was right. Pins pulled way to early.

[KinGIIRomE]

Imagine driving a car right after you took out the lug nuts. Does that make sense to you? Lol

[jamesjohnson]

The kid in me wants to play with that model crane so badly.

[Teghead]

Crazy level of incompetence. Mismanagement kills innocent people in that line of work.

[gpa]

the first clear video shown on the news the days it happened, I noticed the pins connecting the sections were missing and told my good job Brian!

[numberbobo]

So the early theories on this one were correct. Quadruple sad because it was entirely preventable.

[blindwit]

Whoever thought "Hey, we should pull all the pins for dismantling all at once" is going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives. They are responsible for the deaths of four people. Such a shame. All because they couldn't just slow down and pull pins a section at a time (as you would logically think it should be done for safety).

[JackF]

In this section we find the usual pearls of wisdom from the Captain Obvious Brigade

[RustyCanadien]

unbelievable this could've 100% been avoided...

[GlobalistJuice]

Not reading the manufacturer's instructions, will get you in trouble just assembling a bookshelf.

[joeshmoe]

OK, I am not a crane disassembler, I don't even play one on TV, BUT it would never make sense to me to pull bolts and pins on sections not ready to be lifted by the assist crane. Never mind manufactures suggestions, just rudimentary knowledge of physics says this is a bad idea. If the thing was lying on the ground, sure...standing? No way. I would have said something and/or walked of the site...preferably in a direction perpendicular to the prevailing wind.

[iancameron]

We were taking our crane down that day, north, Vancouver B.C, and had the same winds ( except in km/h)
We had to shut down.
You didnt hear about us on the news. We did review our procedures.
Brothers dies that day. So did 2 who happened by. Sad. Truly sad.

[cpcattin]

Nobody is in anyone’s pocket. The dismantling team had a bad case of “get home itis” Not unlike many deceased private pilots.

[mrsmith]

Why is the volume so low with out headphones in the beginning you could barely hear anything

[GH-oijf]

It’s crazy. It seems to me that a foreman from the crane services company should be directing every step of the operation. Who was in charge here?

[matrox]

When he said they started removing the pins...I said ahhh sh!t. They still had a problem above yet they started removing the pins!!?? Who TF was in charge of that dumbass decision??!!😩😓

[Barrymccockiner]

Seems like they were in the middle of dismantling the crane when they were shut down due to heavy wind, they basically stopped in the middle of the tear down leaving the crane unprepared to handle the wind, also I have no ideas why two iron workers were left on top of the crane with most of the pins taken out and 50mph wind gusts, someone has to pay for this, this wasn’t an accident.

[intrepid_wandering]

He mentions a 60mph gust. In the accident video, several trees a block away look completely undisturbed around the time of the fall. It's possible the buildings and such dissipated the gust at lower altitudes, but I feel like there should have been at least some movement in those trees. Sounds like pure negligence, not weather.

[mrsmith]

In the police video one of the construction workers tried saying it was just windy & that blew it away they forgot to mention that they took out the pins too early smh Worried about themselves instead of telling the truth to help the fallen victims & there family