1 dead, 3 injured in massive crane collapse in NYC

NEW YORK — A pedestrian was killed and three people were injured Friday when a huge construction crane collapsed in lower Manhattan as workers were trying to lower and secure it against rising winds, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Pronounced dead at the scene was 38-year-old David Wichs, of Manhattan's Upper West Side, the New York City Police Department said. The injured, whose names were not immediately released, were hit by falling debris, authorities said. Two were listed in serious condition.

The mayor initially said the person killed had been sitting in a car, but the police later said he had been walking near a car.
The Daily News reported that one of the injured, Thomas O'Brien, 73, was in the nearby car waiting for his daughter when the heavy metal crushed much of the vehicle. O'Brien received a head laceration.
The crane, with a 565-foot boom that stretched roughly as long as a city block, plummeted around 8:24 a.m. EST near 40 Worth Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood, the New York City Fire Department said.
Jesse Natale, a 26-year-old civil engineer from Westfield, N.J., told the Daily News he was waiting at a traffic light at the site when the crane came down.
“If I caught that light, I’d be dead probably,” he said. “It looked like an avalanche — or that the roof was caving in from the snow.”
Twisted red-colored metal from the plunging boom smashed into parked cars and debris littered streets and sidewalks. More than 100 firefighters and emergency personnel and more than 30 firetrucks and other equipment responded to the scene.
City officials said utility workers were taking gas readings in the area and making plans to excavate and cap a low-pressure gas main in the wake of the collapse.
De Blasio said construction work was halted on the building Thursday after operators decided to lower and secure the crane against winds, which at times gusted between 20-25 mph.
“They were in the process of securing the crane ... actually preparing to bring it down, to secure it,” he said.
De Blasio said there likely would have been more victims if workmen hadn't already cleared the area of traffic and people to prepare for lowering the crane. "Thank God we didn’t have more injuries and lose more people,” de Blasio said. “It’s something of a miracle that there was not more of an impact.”
Glenn Zito, who was working on the upper floors of a building across the street, captured the crane's collapse in a dramatic video. Zito and two other workers were asked to come down from the upper floors because of the wind and were making their way down when they stopped to watch the crane being lowered.