$150 million (!!!) in damages awarded for Seattle crane collapse
Jul 14, 2022
From an article published in Weekender Magazine
By: Itzik Simon
A U.S. court has ruled that three companies must pay approximately $150 million in compensation to the families of victims of a deadly crane collapse in 2019 during the construction of a Google project in Seattle. The tragic incident injured three people and killed four, including a 71-year-old local government employee and a 19-year-old student.
The jury found that the companies were negligent for ignoring the manufacturer’s instructions to dismantle the crane by removing nearly all pins and tower sleeves simultaneously. The allocation of liability was determined as follows: 45% to the company responsible for erecting and dismantling the crane, 30% to the subcontractor of the mobile cranes, and 25% to the crane owner.
Not only in the US
In Israel, a tower crane is defined in several pieces of legislation, primarily in the Safety at Work Regulations (Tower Cranes), 1967, and in the Safety at Work Regulations (Crane Operators, Other Lifting Machinery Plants and Slingers), 1993.
Tower cranes in Israel typically rise to a height of at least about 30 meters above ground level and can reach heights of several tens of meters. In some cases, the crane is not anchored to the ground but rather attached to a structure (“climbing” crane), and its height increases as construction progresses.
Unfortunately, crane accidents occur far too frequently at construction sites in Israel. As part of the effort to combat this phenomenon, numerous measures have been taken, and in 2021 the “Tower Crane Companies Association” was established for the first time within the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce.
This is not a trivial matter but an urgent necessity. A survey published in early 2020 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Hygiene found that approximately 77% of crane operators in Israel had experienced at least one “near-miss” situation, and 35% had actually been involved in work accidents in which a worker was injured. Link to the article.
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