Posted on 06/01/2008 12:52:19 AM PDT by neverdem
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has opened a criminal investigation into a fatal crane accident on the East Side, focusing on whether a part of the crane had been seriously damaged last year and then inappropriately put back into service, an official involved in the investigation said on Saturday.
The piece in question is a rotating apparatus, or turntable, that connects the operator’s cab and the boom to the crane tower. The official said investigators believed but were not certain that the turntable involved in Friday’s accident, on East 91st Street, was damaged during construction on West 46th Street last year.
In both jobs, the cranes were owned by the New York Crane and Equipment Corporation. The owner of the company, James F. Lomma, did not return calls.
If the turntable in Friday’s accident is the same as the one damaged last year, the district attorney’s office will try to answer several questions, people involved in the investigation said. Those questions include: Did the Department of Buildings order New York Crane to dispose of the cracked turntable? If New York Crane was authorized to repair the turntable, was the work done correctly? And was the Buildings Department required to sign off on those repairs?
The division of the district attorney’s office handling the investigation, the Rackets Bureau, looks into all fatal construction accidents in the borough. But in some of those cases it quickly determines that there is no criminal liability.
“I wouldn’t say that here,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was in its earliest stages. “I think it’s an open question. If in fact that turntable was taken out of service and someone put it back in service improperly, that could lead to criminal liability.”
Barbara Thompson, the spokeswoman for the district...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/nyregion/01collapse.html?ref=nyregion# the story's regular webpage with multiple other links on this story
Module map of stem cell genes guides creation of epithelial cancer stem cells.
Cancer and embryonic stem cells share genetic fingerprints
Since when does NY have more money to burn or borrow? Basic work on non-human embryonic stem cells might gain some insights, but human embryonic stem cells are not needed. Induced pluripotent stem cells(IPSC) and adult stem cells can be used instead, IMHO.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
That can’t be. I just heard that idiot, Bloomberg pronounce that it was just an unfortunate accident, no one’s fault, inspected last week, blah, blah, blah.
The “accident” had a cause.
It was an accident only in that no one planned for it to snap off like that and kill two people. But it wasn’t an accident, in the sense that something caused it to happen despite all the claims by Bloomy that everything was done properly.
DUH...if it was inspected just before it snapped off and given the ok, that right there tells you something was wrong with whatever was done prior.
The public is going to eventually demand ten inspectors on every site where a crane is located...and construction in the city will slow to a crawl...but maybe thats the only way to decrease the issues. I read somewhere last year where the Russian mafia has moved into the city construction business and has projects under “control”.
They might require more skilled inspectors to really do their job, charge the operating construction companies for the cost, and see to it that graft and city worker-fraud aren’t tolerated in this particular area. Not such a bad approach, I don’t think.
Thanks for the ping!
“Since when does NY have more money to burn or borrow?”
NYS is supposed to be broke, but yet the governor, and other hard liberals, want to throw money away on pie-in-the sky embryonic stem cell research, that has never helped one single person, plus can cause cancer and other horrible problems.
And worse, they are killing, or experimenting on HUMAN embryos.
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