Though it happened across the border, April鈥檚 collapse of a tower crane in downtown Seattle wasn鈥檛 far from the minds of sa国际传媒鈥檚 crane community at a safety conference in Richmond.
In the Seattle incident, crews disassembling an 85-metre-tall crane removed too many connecting bolts too soon, against manufacturer instructions, and the structure toppled in a gust of wind killing two ironworkers who rode it down and two people in cars on the street below.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a wake-up call for sure,鈥� said Fraser Cocks, executive director of sa国际传媒 Crane Safety, the agency responsible for certification of crane operators in the province and co-organizer of the conference with WorkSafe sa国际传媒
鈥淵ou always hear about them in the news and the question comes up, can it happen here?鈥� Cocks said, adding that such disasters always get the industry examining how it operates.
With 300 tower cranes at work in sa国际传媒, 250 in the Lower Mainland alone, and no sign of the sector slowing down, sa国际传媒 Crane Safety and WorkSafe sa国际传媒 co-hosted their second annual safety conference for 160 industry leaders.
In the province鈥檚 case, WorkSafe sa国际传媒 immediately sent a letter out after the Seattle disaster reminding crane owners to be diligent about following manufacturer instructions when assembling or disassembling tower cranes, said Doug Younger, a key occupational safety officer on the agency鈥檚 crane inspection team.
鈥淭hat kind of event that close is immediately blasted out,鈥� Younger said.
Generally, Younger said, the crane sector鈥檚 safety record is 鈥渜uite good.鈥�
鈥淲e have the industry鈥檚 ear. It鈥檚 a small industry and it鈥檚 fair to say 80 per cent of [its] leadership is here,鈥� Younger said.
At the same time, there are safety issues that Younger wants to stay on top of. For instance, he said this year WorkSafe sa国际传媒 has recorded 22 contact incidents with tower cranes, incidents where cranes have hit power lines, hit other structures or another crane on construction sites where two or more cranes operate on overlapping paths.
None of those resulted in injuries or fatalities, but all of them had potential to be catastrophic, Younger said, and all of them were preventable.
And so many cranes at work in the province, from downtown Vancouver and Victoria to sa国际传媒 Hydro鈥檚 Site C dam project near Fort St. John, Younger said, 鈥渨ork sites aren鈥檛 getting any easier.鈥�
