12.10.2015
Dutch crane mess cleared
The two cranes that overturned in August in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands have now been removed.
Click here to see Major crane incident in Netherlands
A large floating crane was brought in, along with three large telescopic All Terrains from Mammoet. The two stricken cranes were then cut into sections and lifted on to barges by the floating crane.
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One of the fallen cranes is hoisted by the floating crane after its boom had been removed
Then on Friday the dropped bridge deck – the load that the two cranes had dropped - was also raised from the flattened buildings, using a combination of the floating crane and the two larger mobiles, both of which were working with boom suspension systems in place. The deck was then placed back into the barge mounted cradle that it had been delivered on.
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The bridge deck is lifted and placed into the barge mounted delivery cradle
The building rubble will now be moved and the road and underground services checked out before the bridge is finally repaired. We hope to learn more on how the recovery was planned and executed, but are posting this preliminary report following a large number of requests for information on the recovery, which was clearly a challenging proposition, given the access to the area etc…
If and when we do receive more we will publish a full report in Cranes & Access magazine.
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The mobile cranes were located in the street this time
Sherm
In 1973 I took a class in risk management and accident prevention for workplace settings presented by Liberty Mutual Insurance. To this day I use what was taught...accidents do not just happen they are caused often by human errors. Liberty suggested they give the class because my volume of accident reports andworker injuries in six industrial cafeterias was far above average. Liberty threatened to cancel my insurance if I, as operations manager, didn't take evasive action to correct this problem.
Based on the above I wonder where mistakes were made for this crane operation to go so wrong and be so costly. Surely those who participated in the decision making cannot shrug their shoulders and excuse that they had planned everything carefully. Had they hired professional people to engineer and specific and be covered for total liability? I hope the findings will be posted on Vertikal News for all of us to learn from. Together we can make the crane and access industry safety better but we must be willing to teach learn and admit our mistakes.