Boom is appropriate given that the subject of this post is a crane.

In a conference call at 2:45pm on Tuesday afternoon, a loud BOOM was heard from outside. My instinctive reaction was that one of the adjacent tower cranes had fallen over, so loud and earth-shaking was the noise, but no, from a quick glance they were both still standing so I went back to my work. A few seconds later, Rennie exclaimed “Oh my goodness”, so I turned and looked more closely.

What I then noticed was that the left-hand tower was swaying violently back and forth to the extent it was a wonder that it didn’t collapse, especially when thinking of how simply they are held together.  Being tall, as yet unbraced to the building under construction and undamped, it took a long time to stop swaying, too.

Whilst watching it became apparent that the wire rope had either broken or pulled out of its anchor and the heavy load being lifted had plummeted to the ground. We haven’t heard anything in the news so can only assume that nobody was hurt or killed.

Click on the above photograph to magnify it and you will see that the trolley is in the middle of the boom (with a worker inspecting it if you look really closely) but the rope is hanging from the end.

Today, maintenance workers were seen on the boom of the adjacent crane, greasing the rope. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Steve