09.03.2011

Two loader accidents in three days

There have been two serious loader crane accidents so far this week in Austria, the first in Vösendorf on Monday and a second in Amstetten yesterday.

On Monday a truck driver was using his loader crane to unload window frames in Vösendorf near Vienna when it toppled over and landed on a minivan and the front of a passing car. A woman and six year old child in the car were unhurt, but a bystander was caught under the crane and had to be rescued. He was airlifted to hospital where he was reported to be in serious condition.
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In Vösendorf it looks as though the outriggers are not set?

From the photograph that we have been sent, it looks as though the large crane was lifting with its outriggers stowed.

Then yesterday the boom and jib of a loader crane literally snapped off as it was lifting a pallet of old roof tiles from the side of a house in Amstetten, Lower Austria. The broken part of the boom along with its jib/upper boom fell onto a scaffold that ran along the side of the house on which four men were working.
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The boom broke at the top of the first telescopic section

The four men were thrown from the scaffold, two of them, an 18 and 48 year old were badly injured suffering a number of broken bones, while their colleagues a 19 and 20 year old were relatively unharmed.
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The jib came down on a scaffold

The latter accident is highly unusual and only a full and detailed investigation of the boom structure will shed any light on what happened.