New York City building officials are enforcing new safety regulations for cranes after determining the cause of a partial crane collapse that injured several people in Midtown in 2023.
Diesel-powered tower cranes now must have fire suppression and detection systems, officials said Friday. People in charge of operating and supervising these machines must also meet more stringent experience qualifications.
Authorities announced the new requirements following the conclusion of a more than two-year investigation into a July 2023 crane collapse that took place on Manhattan's West Side on a weekday morning. Officials said the machine was lifting 14,000 pounds of concrete atop a 45-story construction project on 10th Avenue and West 40th Street when a fire broke out on the crane’s deck, weakening the structure supporting its 165-foot-long boom. The boom peeled away from its base and plummeted to the ground, investigators found.
A report released Friday concluded the fire started when flammable hydraulic fuel oil sprayed out of a disconnected hose near the crane’s engine compartment and made contact with the hot surface on the deck. The fire quickly intensified and the operator could not put it out with the on-deck fire extinguisher, according to the report.
The operator was able to climb down to safety, but the wire rope holding up the boom gave way, injuring some other construction workers and grazing a neighboring building as it came crashing down, officials said. The street below was largely empty at the time, and no one was seriously wounded.
The crane was owned by New York Crane and Equipment Corp. and being leased and operated by Cross Country Construction LLC for the job, according to the buildings department. After the incident, the agency said it issued four safety violations to the project’s general contractor, Monadnock Construction Inc., and Cross Country. Of the three violations citing Monadnock, one was dismissed, the other was immediately rectified and the third is being challenged in court, according to the company.
In a statement Friday, Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo called the crane collapse “a singular nightmare scenario for the construction industry,” but said construction injuries and incidents are at their lowest level in more than a decade due to “rigorous enforcement of the city’s safety codes” and consistent reevaluations of those rules.
The investigation also analyzed similar collapses involving cranes from the same manufacturer, Favelle Favco, across the world. After two incidents in Australia in 2012 and 2016, the company recommended measures to their customers to help prevent crane fires and boom failures. The Department of Buildings found none of those recommendations were being followed by New York Crane and Equipment Corp. at the Midtown construction site.
The agency said it created a new license class in November 2024 for operators of smaller hoisting machines, requiring them to have more than 3,000 hours of experience and certain industry certifications. Previously, anyone could have operated these smaller lifts for delivery purposes, regardless of whether they had done so before, officials said.
A representative of New York Crane and Equipment Corp. declined to comment Friday.
James Yolles, a spokesperson for Monadnock, the general contractor on the project, said the report only mentions the company for “the decisive, life-saving action by our team on the day of the incident” and “notes that those efforts should set the standard for the construction industry.”
The other companies identified in the buildings department’s report did not immediately respond to inquiries.
This story has been updated with additional information.
