To better protect construction workers from dangerous crane accidents, OSHA recently released a final rule on crane operator certification requirements. The new rule makes employers responsible for the training and evaluation of their crane operators. Employers are also responsible for documenting the successful completion of the evaluations. Crane operators need…
Crane accidents can have dramatic consequences and one way to prevent such accidents is to make sure crane operators are proprely trained and certified. So far, operators of cranes and derricks have been receiving different levels of certification based on the rated operating capacity (ROC) of the machine they are…
More than two years ago, our client Rebecca Wichs lost her husband in a crane accident in downtown Manhattan. David Wichs was crossing the street when he was fatally struck by a collapsing crane. That day, despite heavy snow and winds, the City didn’t order crane operators to lower and…
To reduce the number of crane accidents, OSHA has been working on a new rule that would require crane operators to be certified. The certification requirement was supposed to come into effect on November 10th 2017. However one day before, on November 9th, OSHA published a Final Rule postponing this…
Despite multiple past crane accidents that have proven that crane operators needed to be trained and certified, OSHA one more time wants to delay the effective date of its new crane operator requirement. The original planned date was in 2014. This extension follows President Trump’s directive that all federal agencies…
A crane operator and a construction worker were killed Tuesday when a 6,500-pound beam came crashing down at a Queens construction site, authorities said. A preliminary investigation determined that the incident, which took place shortly after 12 p.m. in the Briarwood neighborhood, was the result of a “material failure” with…
Thankfully nobody was injured in a New York crane accident last Thursday. Construction workers at the WTC site were pulling the unloaded line and hook of a crane standing on the top of a building under construction when the accident happened. The workers had been instructed to do so as…
4 people were injured in a crane accident in New York. A giant crane collapsed on Tuesday around noon on the Tappan Zee bridge landing on the 8 lanes of the highway (see video). It is a miracle that no vehicle were struck by the crane and nobody was killed…
Following the fatal collapse of a crane in lower Manhattan last February, Mayor de Blasio and NYC building commissioner Rick Chandler created the Crane Safety Technical Working Group. The mission of this independent group of experts was to assess actual New York crane safety regulations and provide a set of recommendations…
The widow of David Wichs who was killed by a crane that collapsed on a New York Street (see previous post) is intending to sue the City for $600M. Rebecca Wichs who is represented by our partner, New York crane accident attorney Howard Hershenhorn, filed a notice of claim last…