01.12.2007

Boom truck accident

Raymond David Hart, 21, died on Tuesday afternoon after he was crushed by the boom of a loader crane he was working on. The accident occurred at a truck repair facility in Albany, New York.

Albany police detective James Miller said that Hart was working on a flatbed truck with a crane attachment that was propped up. “It looked like the hydraulics blew and the crane collapsed on top of him,”

Hart’s co-workers attempted to raise the boom in vain and then reversed the truck out of the bay in order to try and raise the boom with a forklift. Eventually firefighters freed him 17 minutes after he had been trapped.

Hart was unconscious when rescued and was pronounced dead from a blunt trauma shortly after he arrived at the Albany Medical Center.

Vertikal Comment

Serious accidents from falling booms during service or repair occurs all too frequently and yet can so easily be avoided by using a pupose built prop.

When the do happen such accidents are exasperated by ignorance in how to rescue a trapped person or to remove the pressure. We do not know the details of this accident, but one wonders what the outcome might have been if his workmates had managed to free him sooner?

Whether it is an emergency descent on an arial lift or raising a boom that has dropped, if those working in the vacinity had the knowledge of what to do, the number of fatalities woudl surely fall?