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News Briefs

Date Posted: October 14 2005

Crane operator prevents accident
Quick thinking by a crane operator dealing with mechanical failure in the rig's boom hoist prevented major damage or injury from happening Sept. 26 at a parking structure under construction in Sault Ste. Marie.

A 250-ton capacity crane run by Local 324 operator Mark Matthews had been boomed out, and he was bringing into position a 36-ton section of pre-cast concrete wall when symptoms of instability generated by mechanical failure suddenly occurred.

Rather than proceed with the lift, or stop and keep the wall suspended in midair, the operator quickly and safely lowered it where it was. It demolished a section of fence on a property neighboring the site, uprooted a tree, and damaged another tree, but caused no other damage.

Local 324 Northwest Michigan BA Sam Houston said Matthews' quick thinking 
saved the structure from damage, and perhaps the lives and limbs of other workers toiling on the structure.

"It takes years of experience with a crane to be able to think on your feet that quickly," Houston said. "Mark's a well-trained operator, and he did a good job."

The crane was immediately sidelined after the accident, inspected, and kept non-operational until a replacement boom section could be brought in from Manitoba.

The $6.3 million, 400-car parking structure is being built under a general contract with Devere Construction Co., Alpena. Some work has been delayed a few days but the project is still expected to meet its targeted completion date, with the structure open to vehicles on Dec. 16.

(Michigan Construction News.com contributed to this report).

Safety added in to U.S. road bill
OSHA will begin an initiative in 2006 designed to prevent falls in construction, the safety agency said last month.

Stewart Burkhammer, head of OSHA's Office of Construction Services, told the Construction Labor Report that while fatalities have dropped in some areas, "we're not happy" about the rise in fall fatalities, which are "way up."

OSHA initiated a similar drive in 2003 and 2004 to address an uopward spike of trenching deaths. Trenching deaths dropped slightly from one year to the next, and OSHA said more information is needed to determine the success of the drive.

Falls are nearly always the leading cause of on-the-job fatalities in the construction industry, followed by struck-by and electrocution categories.

Record August for U.S. construction
U.S. construction set a monthly record in August, spending $1.108 billion (seasonally adjusted) the Census Bureau reported.

"The figure is especially impressive in that Hurricane Katrina disrupted some construction late in the month," said Associated General Contractors of America Chief Economist Ken Simonson.

He said he does not expect "a quick rebound in construction in the hurricane zone," but there will be much emergency work going on, like repairing levees, highways and other infrastructure. Residential construction will take months or years to get going on a large scale, he predicted.