By Gabriela Resto-Montero and Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
An out-of-control, 200-foot crane ran into scaffolding on the Upper West Side Thursday afternoon, disrupting rush hour traffic while firefighters fought to secure it, authorities said.
The crane became unstabilized at the northeast corner of West 97th Street and Columbus Avenue at approximately 2:15 p.m. Thursday afternoon, the FDNY said. Nobody was injured in the accident.
The FDNY was still working to secure the crane at 5 p.m.
The construction site, 775 Columbus Avenue, has been the subject of several complaints over the past two months, including allegations of unsafe work conditions and an unsecured crane, according to Department of Buildings records on their Web site.
A resident of the building next to the site, David Fuhrman, said he had filed two complaints of his own in the past week about the crane. Fuhrman is a crane operator, and he said he became concerned when he saw hydraulic fluid leaking from the crane.
“I told my wife this morning this crane was going to fail today,” Fuhrman said. “Somebody could have been underneath there, and they could have been killed.”
Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles are on the scene, and police have restricted access to 97th street, between Columbus and Central Park West, to foot traffic only.
The safety manager at the site, Anthony Mancusi, said the cause of the accident was a mechanical failure and the crane would be taken in for inspection.
“This crane is not going to be in working order anytime soon,” Mancusi said.
The incident brought back memories of 2008 when seven people were killedand dozens injured when a crane in Midtown came smashing down on a townhouse. Less than three months later, two workers died when a 200-foot crane collapsed on the Upper East Side in a similar accident.
The series of accidents prompted New York City to join Chicago and Philadelphia in constructing a crane database to track the failures that leads to these accidents, in the hopes of decreasing their frequency.
