28.03.2022

Double fatality not a crane

Two men died in what was originally called a crane related incident in Boynton Beach, Florida last Tuesday.

Details of the incident are still somewhat unclear, what we do know is that a prefabricated concrete wall panel collapsed onto two men, Jeremias Mendez, 32, and Eduardo Cruz-Moran, 25. The immediate focus of the incident has been on a crawler crane owned by Allegiance Crane & Equipment, which was sitting alongside the new waterside apartment block at the Riverwalk centre. However, it was simply standing there with its luffing jib in an out of service mode. There are also two tower cranes on site and a loader crane was working at the rear of the building.

The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration is investigating the incident but has not yet issued a formal statement. We do know however that cranes were not involved in the incident, apart from one of the tower cranes lifting the debris off of the two trapped men.

The raw video footage below shows the scene shortly after the incident occurred although its does not shed much light on the incident. Unlike the local news reports it does not blame the out of service crane. If we hear anything more on the issue that might be relevant we will update this item.