Three men died and one was seriously injured when a work platform attachment broke away from a mobile crane in Taiwan yesterday.
The incident occurred at an animal feed factory in Huwei Township on Taiwan’s central East coast in Yunlin County, south of Taichung City around 13:30 yesterday. The four were working on a roof repair from the basket attached to a Japanese City type Rough Terrain crane, at a height of between six to eight metres when he platform support mechanism suffered a structural failure, dropping them to the ground below.
photos courtesy Yunlin County Fire Department
The three died at the scene from a cardiac arrest, while the fourth man was unconscious when the emergency services arrived. . The dead men were named as Chen, 61, Ko, 57 and Kuo, 50. The Yunlin police service have said that based on their preliminary investigation, the four men and their equipment substantially exceeded the safe working capacity of the basket attachment. The also said that the Feed company had hired the crane company to repair the factory’s damaged roof.
We are not at this stage sure what make this basket was, but capacities for this type are usually limited to two people, with capacities ranging from 250 to 500kg. So, for the box section support to fail, even with four men seems a little unexpected, unless there were a good few tools and material in with them.
No matter what this is a tragic and seemingly avoidable incident affecting at least four families.
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