Four killed as crane crushes NYC building

I would imagine that most of us in this class has heard and read several articles pertaining to the recent crane collapse that devastated a neighborhood on the East side of Manhattan. The skyscraper was planned to be a 43 storey condominium and 19 floors were completed. The crane was attached alongside the skyscraper and toppled over crashing into other residential buildings in the area of construction. There was a total of 4 deaths and they were believed to be the construction workers. Another 13 people were injured in what is called one of New York Cities worst construction accident in recent history.

The Crane split into pieces as if fell demolishing a townhouse and 3 other buildings. What seems to be the problem that caused the accident was that a piece of steel fell off and sheared a girder holding the crane to the building. Residents from the neighborhood complained about the construction site on several occasions. They cited the fact that workers were working illegal hours and said the building seemed to be going up very fast.
I also learned that prior to the collapse 13 violations were issued to the particular site in the past 27 months. There have been many things said about this destruction. With the tenants complaints and the violations at the sight should have brought inspectors should have been more adament by taking a closer look at these serious complaints. But someone obviously did not do their job effectively putting many precious lives at risk. New York City constructs high rise buildings all the time, so this is not something that is foreign to them and in this case red flags were certainly thrown to officials putting them in the position to make sure safety regulations and any building codes were enforced.

I've read several articles about this crane crash as well as seeing television reports on the news. Clearly who ever was in charge of the construction site knows that someone was not doing their job effectively. I see this as blame responsibility, because egineers are known for being responsible. But this was not the case in this collapse. Stricter codes must be enforced for the safety of all persons involved, including the construction workers and the residents of the neighborhood. If these inspectors are not doing their job, then perhaps someone needs to be checking on them to ensure the safety of the workers and community.

[This article can be found in our NJIT database]
http://www.lexisnexis.com.libdb.njit.edu:8888/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T3573061946&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T3573061955&cisb=22_T3573061954&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=244777&docNo=23