11.02.2005

Two die in West Sussex crane collapse

A tower crane collapsed on a job site hitting a second crane in the process, at Durrington High School in Worthing, West Sussex, at around 10:30 am this morning killing two tower crane erectors.

No pupils were hurt in the incident. A third man, the driver of one of the cranes, suffered serious head injuries after falling from the cab and remains in a stable condition at Worthing Hospital.
The cranes were being dismantled at the time, when for some reason the one being worked on toppled over, tangling in the hoist cables of the other. The boom on the second crane buckled at a point just beyond the boom suspension rods, saving its main tower.
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One crane fell over and hit another

The two dead men are said to have fallen over 30 metres from the boom of one of the cranes and died instantly.

The cranes have been in place, carrying out lifting duties on the new £11 million Highdown School for children with special needs, since last June. The site is 150 yards from the main Durrington High School buildings and the accident was witnessed by pupils in some of the classrooms.

The dead men were Gary Miles, 37, and Steven Boatman, 45, both from Reading, were working for rental company W D Bennetts Plant& Services, based in Gloucestershire, which supplied the two cranes and was responsible for dismantling them. The site is run by Willmott Dixon, based in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire.


Both WD Bennets and Willmott Dixon said that they could not comment about the accident but were co-operating fully with officials from the Health and Safety Executive.

30 Paramedics, firefighters and police were called to the scene, but had little to do. Fortunately the incident occured during a tea break, otherwise the death toll might have been considerably higher.

Health and Safety Executive officials also arrived to start in Investigation into the accident. Experts were also looking at the second crane, which was hit and dmaged by the toppled crane, to ensure that it was still stable and plan its removal.

A spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive said: "We will be investigating but we don’t have any details at the moment." It is understood though that an experienced investigator will be brought in to discover exactly what went wrong.