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Bridge building accident

crane operator

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
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8,313
Location
sw missouri
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skyking1

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Joined
Nov 3, 2020
Messages
7,621
Location
washington
RIP and condolences to those affected by this. I have been around a couple of blowouts, but nothing like a deck collapse.
 

CM1995

Administrator
Joined
Jan 21, 2007
Messages
13,353
Location
Alabama
Occupation
Running what I brung and taking what I win
Read that today on a trade website. Goes to show to never let your guard down.

RIP
 

willie59

Administrator
Joined
Dec 21, 2008
Messages
13,392
Location
Knoxville TN
Occupation
Service Manager
Reminds me of years ago I wheeled onto a site in a 30 ton crane to pour a retaining wall. I looked at the form work and asked the job boss if he thought there was enough braces on that form. He was confident all was good. Ok then. Started pouring with the bucket, other guy was using the dildo, after a short while I saw those guys bail, literally jump off of the form. I knew what was going on and just shut the crane down, leaned back and crossed my legs.
 

skyking1

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2020
Messages
7,621
Location
washington
They lost a big piece of a post tension deck pour on that big building I worked on last year, but I was long gone. I just heard about it.
When we were building the 520 floating bridge pontoons they had a big one. Those pours are 29 feet tall that is a lot of pressure on those pontoon pours.
They were pouring into the evening and I was gone, when I came back there was a big slobber of concrete dumped out on the ground, 40 yards or so. They let it cure out :facepalm:
Then the night shift guys tried to break it up with one of those 15K Extreme forklifts and the light material bucket. They got it hooked in really good, rolled back and made that light bucket into a really pretty symmetrical V-Plow!!
I'm not kidding it was bent at least a foot in the middle. Then they rented a mini and hoe ram. Any old broke down backhoe could have dealt with it at the right time in the cure.
 

mowingman

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2010
Messages
1,236
Location
SE Ohio
Occupation
Retired
51 workers were killed when this concrete cooling tower collapsed in April, of 1978. I can see the stacks at the plant from our house. https://www.nist.gov/el/failure-coo...aster was,51 construction workers were killed.
I worked on a lot of large concrete stacks, silos, and cooling towers in my younger days. Being way up high on fresh concrete,whether slip formed, or held in place by forms, always made me nervous. A guy working on a tall smokestack once told me,"you can die as easy from a 20' fall, as from a 1000' fall. So, why worry about the height". Somehow, that did not make me feel any better.
Jeff
 

kshansen

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2012
Messages
11,160
Location
Central New York, USA
Occupation
Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
A guy working on a tall smokestack once told me,"you can die as easy from a 20' fall, as from a 1000' fall. So, why worry about the height". Somehow, that did not make me feel any better.
Jeff

The problem I see is the time it takes to fall that 1,000 feet. 20 feet might not be long enough to think about much but 1,000 feet would be a long time to think!
 
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