It’s amazing that we can land a rover on Mars and get the thing to patrol around for over a year all while broadcasting images back to Earth and yet we’re unable to invent scaffolding that doesn’t malfunction. Today, two workers were rescued after the scaffolding basket gave way leaving it dangling at a perilous angle, 60 stories above the street. They were eventually pulled to safety through a window in the building. |Newsday|
Photo: Gawker
With Hurricane Ike sucking up all the airtime this weekend—since Bush fucked up Katrina every approaching storm is now an all encompassing media event—you might not have heard about Friday’s train crash in California. A commuter train headed from downtown LA to Ventura County collided with a Union Pacific freight train at 42 mph. Federal investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board are talking with two teenagers who claims they received text messages from the commuter train’s engineer around the time of the crash and could be the reason a stop signal was ignored. The engineer was killed and along with 24 others and the Feds plan on obtaining the cell phone records. If evidence does point to texting as the main culprit, a footnote should be made in the historical record for the day that humans officially devolved. |WaPost|
Photo: AP Photo/Hector Mata
Surprisingly, only two people suffered minor injuries when a glass panel fell more than 50 stories from the future Bank of America building (1 Bryant Park) onto scaffolding, shattered, and showered the sidewalk with shards. Naturally, Curbed has at least 4 updates. |Curbed|
Sure, the weather might be nice and all, but LA sucks in comparison to Manhattan’s stable, bedrock footing: “A 5.4 magnitude earthquake rattled Los Angeles on Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries. The quake struck at 11:42 am (1842 GMT) and was centered near the town of Chino Hills, 33 miles (50 kilometers) east of Los Angeles at a depth of 7.6 miles (12 kilometers), the United States Geological Survey said.” |AFP|
So that recent crane collapse on Manhattan’s upper East Side? According to investigators it could be the fault of the Chinese: “It is possible that the weld that failed was done on a part in a factory in China,” Richard Mendelson, regional director of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirmed yesterday. |NYDN|
A passed out drunk driving moron from Texas plowed in a pelaton of racing cyclists earlier this week in Mexico. One biker was killed and 10 others were injured. |AP|
With the recent crane collapse in Manhattan—the 2nd deadly accident in under three months—everyone’s got a theory to why the sky is falling. Some are blaming on a booming city in the Middle East: “The growth of Dubai, epicenter of the global construction boom, is making cranes harder to come by and more expensive to rent in New York, industry leaders say. An estimated 25 percent of the world’s largest construction cranes are now in the United Arab Emirates boomtown of Dubai.” |NYP|
Here’s a photo of 1749 First Avenue, the residential building that took the brunt of today’s crane collapse on East 91st Street and 1st Avenue. It was taken in 2005 by Untitled Name’s Will Sherman. |UntitledName|
Less than two weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC Department of Buildings pledged $5.3 million to fund “63 new positions dedicated to enhancing oversight and enforcing construction safety requirements.” Apparently those hires weren’t made fast enough in the wake of the latest crane collapse on 91st Street this morning.These new additions would bring the total number of Buildings Inspectors to 461 according to an official DOB press release from Sunday May 18.
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