A giant crane lifting an aqueduct section tips over

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/12/a-giant-crane-lifting-an-aquad.html

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Failing to see the gravity of the situation.

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“You never know what you’re capable of until you try it.”

This was what a co-worker of mine used to say. He was a 60-year old alcoholic, who often showed up on Monday mornings with two black eyes after starting fights with guys much larger than him.

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Varese Construction Crane Collapse

Should have stuck to new age movie soundtracks.

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I wonder how many people realize how spectacularly​ expensive that accident was… I really hope the contractor doesn’t go under :frowning:

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Translation from all the guys yelling afterward: “We are so getting fired.”

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Was that Hotdogastan or Hamburgerstan?

That is why you pay attention in math class. Driving a crane smoothly is an art, but whether you can safely lift a known weight at a given boom angle is just math. And many modern cranes let you see the load weight in the cab. There is no real excuse for these things happening.

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Did he not explain to you the first rule of fight club?

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Someone commented at http://www.heavyliftnews.com/news/video--large-crawler-crane-incident

…Although Vernazza is known in the Industry as a qualified lifting contractor, I would very much like to know what went wrong here. From the videos I have watched, it looks like the crane is slightly sinking away under the pressure of the tip of the crawler tracks.

I am not at all impressed by the load spreading mats under the tracks and would not be surprised if this incident was initiated by lack of proper load spreading mats under the tracks in combination with an overload siituation.

It seems, we have a crane incident epidemic!! Already since the 2nd of May, I have posted 11 Crane incidents with 6 Fatalities.

What do I need to say more!!!

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I hope no one was injured or killed.

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support that cake
why use caterpillar to support something

This is what happens when you use in-aqueduct counterbalancing/ballast.

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Which chart in the cab tells you the bearing capacity of the soil?

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No outriggers. Huh.

Vertikal.net:
“The crane, owned by Vernazza, was rigged with a back mast and suspended superlift counterweight was lifting a large section of a new viaduct at the Arcisate Stabio railway yards, near Varese when it appeared to the rear of the tracks came off the ground and after seeming be on the point of balance for a while before it finally lost stability and overturned dumping its load.”

I don’t think soil prep was really the issue. Of course the soil gave way, but that was after the rear of the crane lifted, and concentrated the entire load onto a couple of square meters of ground. Here is a much better view:

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definitely resume generating, maybe career changing event.

For big lift like that an engineer calculates the geometry, the weight of the lift, the reach of the crane - you crunch the numbers, it works or it doesn’t. You find a place for the crane to sit where it does. In other words somebody screwed up here, if not the engineer, then the site people who were responsible for the prep of the earth under the crane.

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Meh, water under the bridge.

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