30.11.2012
GTK fire
A Grove GTK telescopic tower crane caught fire, while working on a wind farm in northern Germany.
The crane, one of the latest to be delivered to southern German crane rental company Wiesbauer – which helped develop the unique crane – was helping erect turbines at a windfarm between Grebs and Prützke near Berlin.
Firefighters were called to the incident, which we believe happened Thursday two weeks ago, to help extinguish the flames at the top of the 81 metre tower. In the end it was decided that the best policy was to let it burn out while ensuring that there was no one in the area in case the fire caused anything to fall. – The GTK is operated from the ground using remote controls.
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One of Wiesbauer's Grove GTK cranes at work
The rescue services used a small drone plane with camera to check out the damage once the fire stopped burning. The next challenge is to bring the crane down safely. Manitowoc engineers were on site to help with the recovery and investigation.
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One would think that in the event of a fire in a remote controlled machine such as this then automatic fire extinguishers and electrical isolation would be standard lets hope that this event brings changes to the industry , and where was the risk assessment in the event of equipment failure .