Investigation to Look into 2004 Crane Collapse in Ohio
November 16, 2005 — According to a recent report in the Toledo Blade, Exponent, of
The city of
According to the news report, five months after the crane's collapse, OSHA reported that the most likely cause was Fru-Con Construction Corp.'s failure to follow the crane manufacturer's instructions for securing the crane's legs during operation. Fru-Con agreed to pay a $280,000 fine in exchange for OSHA's re-labeling the violation from "willful" to "unclassified." In December, 2004, Fru-Con sued the crane's Italian manufacturer over liability for the damages incurred in the collapse. Paolo de Nicola, the crane's manufacturer, began bankruptcy proceedings in its home country this year.
An investigation by The Blade found that Fru-Con received early warnings about not following the manufacturer's recommendations. The review of thousands of documents, along with interviews with dozens of people involved in the project, concluded that — the following items are excerpted from the article:
- Paolo de Nicola sent four messages to Fru-Con in mid-2003 complaining the contractor wasn't safely anchoring the cranes during the first major test, including the memo that warned of a collapse.
- Fru-Con said it corrected the problems after the test. But bridge workers told investigators that the construction firm later reduced the number of anchoring bolts it used on the cranes, against manufacturer specifications.
- Fru-Con complained about crane design flaws, such as an inability to "accommodate" bridge curves. Yet Fru-Con did not share its concerns, or the concerns of Paolo de Nicola, with a special labor-management-government committee established to ensure worker safety. The crane collapsed while being set up over a future bridge curve.
- Government watchdog agencies never inspected the safety of the cranes, which had not been used previously in northwest
