Posted on 07/18/2008 4:05:31 PM PDT by xcamel
MSNBC News Services updated 34 minutes ago
HOUSTON - The largest mobile crane in the nation collapsed at a Houston oil refinery Friday, killing four workers and injuring six others, a company vice president said.
The crane, capable of lifting 800,000 pounds, fell over at a LyondellBasell refinery in southeast Houston about 2 p.m. The large crane fell on or knocked a smaller, nearby crane.
Witnesses said an alarm sounded, and employees ran to a lunch tent that was designated as an emergency evacuation area. However, the crane toppled on top of the tent, killing some inside, KRPC-TV, an NBC affiliate in Houston, reported.
"It sounded like a building — sounded like a building fell," Stacy Davis, a worker, told KRPC-TV. "I looked back. I was on my way to evacuate the plant and I looked back and I seen the arms coming down. After that, I just seen a lot of black smoke."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Prayers for the families.
Accident and Refinery in the same news story is what...10 cents at the pump?
There goes the price of oil again.
Peace to their families.
I doubt that was the biggest in the nation, somebody got their wires crossed I do believe if only rated at 800,000 pounds. Not scheduled to do a lift today, wierd. Sounds if maybe it was boomed up to high and went over backwards and maybe the limiter switch faile. Another wierd thing, they say an alarm sounded and workers evacuated to lunch tent, that does not make sence about the crane. We need a lot more info.
Accident and Refinery in the same news story is what...10 cents at the pump?
It will be interesting to see what the pump price does but according to an article in the Houston Chronicle the plant operations hasn’t been impacted. The crane was there for a routine shut down...
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5895512.html
I doubt that was the biggest in the nation, somebody got their wires crossed I do believe if only rated at 800,000 pounds.
One article I read said it had done an 800,000 lb test lift the other day and was scheduled to do something around a million lbs when they went into the shut down process.
They did qualify that with "mobile"
1,000,000 pounds is only 500 ton, thats not that big as cranes go.
Yea I know but if it wasn’t at least a 1500 ton well , we will wait and see.
Been alot of these lately.
There is so much to know yet. Hydraulic or conventional but it looks like a lattice boom, could have been the jib though.
S&B was putting up the new coker.
At night, we'd get the instrument techs to chingale' the frequency of our
radios and we'd put in calls to S&B's operators, moving their equipment around.
Created massive confusion for them.
RIP. Prayers for the victims.
I can’t immagine what happened here, Deep South is a very reputable company, just sound wierd as hell with the evacuation and all.
something that big could have taken some time to finally go over, so someone could have hit a panic alarm...
If there was a toxic release it is very possible the operator never heard the alarm, could have collapsed on the controls and if the two block switch wasn’t working, well, who knows, we will wait and see.
Never heard of one of those in a plant, see my idea above.
Not in the plant - right on the crane itself...
No, workers in the plant would not know anything about that and I have never heard of a panic button on a crane yet they evacuated to the lunch tent as in a toxic release.
All these crane accidents smell of sabotage.
Are we buying these cranes from China? It seems like there have been more accidents in the last couple of years than I can remember happening in the past.
Just heard this was not a mobile crane. Conventional with over 400 foot of lattice boom. Waiting for more info.
Ping.
It is unusual, isn't it?...Nothing in the last few years, all of a sudden boom...boom ...boom...
unusual to say the least.
Not necessarily the crane itself, but perhaps the steel used in their manufacture?
These cranes are inspected on a regular basis. Welds are check and tested for cracks, every seam is gone over. I doubt you will find this is structural failure, more like some safety feature was overlooked or over ridden for some reason.
America is becoming less like the country we grew up in - the one that could do anything and do it better and faster than others - and more like some third world wannabe where things go bad when they shouldn't many things don't seem to get done right the first two or three tries.
I would like to see a factual study on the impact of affirmative action, EEO, political correctness and similar policies on productivity, quality, etc. in America.
It is likely that these studies have been made but the results are probably classified top secret and locked up in some federal goverment warehouse, never to be released.
A company I worked for was investigated by the EEOC when a female filed a complaint against a job qualification that employees be capable of lifting a specified weight and carrying it up a ladder. Employees who could not were not eligible for employment at that position.
The EEOC found against the company.
They said the company could simply transfer two people to the job, instead of one, to lift the equipment. That doubled the cost of the installation labor and expenses and effectively priced the company out of competition.
The female got the job but she, and about 100 others, eventually got laid off when the company had to give up bidding on those projects.
Actually diminished refinery capacity should cause the price of oil to go down although it would tend to raise the price of gasoline.
A safe area inside a fall zone, what was the safety officer thinking?
It has been reported the crane had over 400 foot of boom.
So are these cranes using Chinese parts now for their repairs?
Chinese parts are *known* for inferior metalurgy...something that you won't find out with a mere visual inspection...until it's too late.
What is going on with cranes crashing to the ground? This is new stuff happening - and the team putting it together was experienced.
Why do you think there’s been a recent rash of crane droppings?
bad metal and bad maintenance
click the link below to go to the slide show of the crane. It does appear that the boom did come over the back but also the crane body came loose from its base. I am not sure wich one caused the other to happen.http://www.click2houston.com/slideshows/index.html
According to this article, the crane model was a VersaCrane TC-36000.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/5897423.html
According to the company web site, that model is capable of lifting 2,500 tons.
http://www.deepsouthcrane.com/equi_vers.asp
Looks like Big Crane is at t again. It must be stopped!
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