Oklahoma Crane Accident Kills Onlooker

Elderly Man Watching Church Steeple Raising Crushed In Car, Wife Injured By Collapse

(AP)  Church members watching the steeple being raised on their new building looked on in horror Thursday as a crane holding the structure toppled, crushing a car and killing an 79-year-old man who had been watching from inside the vehicle, firefighters said.

The man's 78-year-old wife, who was also in the car, was transported to a hospital in good condition, ambulance officials said.

A group of people had gathered in southwest Oklahoma City to watch the installation of the steeple when the crane collapsed in the parking lot, said Deputy Fire Chief Cecil Clay.

Grace Assembly of God Pastor Joe Hancock said the couple were longtime church members.

"Just great people," he said. "It's just a huge loss."

Hancock said he was taking photos from the back of the church when he realized something had gone wrong. The crane started to tip when the steeple was about 10 feet off the ground, he said.

Caleb Fellenstein, the church's youth minister, said the crane started to lower the steeple just before the accident.

"And then it just quickened," he said. "The whole boom and the crane just flipped over. It was like a movie. It was like something unreal.

"I was just standing there in disbelief and panic."

The boom of the portable crane came to rest on the car, the smashed white steeple still attached.

The operator of the crane was not injured.

The woman was in the back seat of the car and the man was in the front passenger seat, said Lara O'Leary, spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority, which operates emergency transport for the area. The couple's names weren't immediately released.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state Labor Department and the owner of the crane, Barnhart Crane and Rigging Co., were to investigate.

Jeff Latture, Barnhart senior vice president, said it had been years since the company had an accident.

"We do about 10,000 jobs a year without incident," he said. "We are very upset about this and certainly are concerned about families involved."

Latture said the cause of the accident will likely be a structural failure of the 90-ton crane, some kind of a problem with the ground it was sitting on, or operator error.

"It was at the beginning of a very simple lift, which is somewhat troubling to us and not far into the lift when the crane went over," he said.

Clay, the fire official, said he saw no obvious equipment failure or problems with the ground the crane was on.

Latture said about 150 feet of the telescoping boom was deployed at the time of the accident.

There have been several deadly crane accidents around the country this year, including one in Houston last week that killed four workers and injured seven others. Crane-related deaths have also occurred in New York, Miami and Las Vegas.

An Associated Press analysis in June found that cities and states have wildly varying rules governing construction cranes.

Cranes in Oklahoma fall under OSHA regulations but operate without any state oversight, state Labor Commissioner Lloyd Fields said. He said Oklahoma may join other states considering improved regulatory oversight of cranes. Oklahoma is among 35 states that do not require crane operators to be licensed.

[mainemade]

The main cause of this (yet another) crane collapse is simple......
Gravity, wins every time.....

[txgrouch2006]

Something tells me they didn''''''''t have cranes.
Posted by YBotherAtAll at 07:27 AM : Jul 25, 2008
---------------------
But something tells ME they had PLENTY of idiots like you.

[txgrouch2006]

deacon20081 wrote
The installer/operator obviously did not extend the outriggers.
---------------
Or the outriggers broke. I thought of that, too.

[slim1h2o]

Something tells me they didn''''t have cranes.

Posted by YBotherAtAll at 07:27 AM : Jul 25, 2008

Yes, they had cranes. How else would they have built the Roman Colliseum? They just didn''t look like what we have today, thats all.

[goldenfi]

They ALWAYS wanted you floundering around doing clumsy work while you learned a new job you never did before. And you KNEW you''''d never get to do the same job again if you ever got any good at it.I got this idea from the my friends on blacklatinmeet.com, which is a niche dating service for whites and blacks.

[adasher1]

Look, another guy busted bones in a church because he thought it would be cool to show his flock some analogy about riding a motorcycle and his flavor of god. God apparently allowed him to fail in front of everyone and he got hurt, in the church....now, this other guy is watching a new addition going up, maybe he even paid for part of it, and BOOM, it falls on him in another failure of god to protect those that prostrate themselves in front of him or her. It''s a sickness to think there is a god...last year in Nashville a lady was killed pulling out of the church parking lot Sunday morning after she was in there for over an hour giving money and praising this god....she pulls out and BAM! Hit and killed by a dump truck in front of everyone.....why would this god take people, as religious people say, in such odd, gross, and bizarre ways? Why not just take them in their sleep? Now, two failures in a week at a church....and peeps pray harder instead of seeing through this man-made effort to earn money without working......stupid.

[ybotheratall]

Didn''''t the fall of the Roman Empire begin this way?

Posted by txgrouch2006 at 10:02 PM

Something tells me they didn''t have cranes.

[deacon20081]

The installer/operator obviously did not extend the outriggers. Such a shame due to inexperience or just laziness.

[o2bewealthy]

Just a guess, but all of these crane incidents might be related to the age of the equipment. My guess is that they were all purchased around the same time and have weakened with age and should be replaced. I suspect there will be more incidents like this in the coming months until construction companies decide to stop writing off the depreciation and get some new, solid equipment.

[toolmangler-2009]

Didn''''t the fall of the Roman Empire begin this way?
Posted by txgrouch2006 at 10:02 PM : Jul 24, 2008


The society crumbled from within, too much Government, too many people wanting freebies, and coruption in every facet of life. Yes thats what happened to them also