careful where you plant your crane feet

[rbargeron]

These pics are making the rounds by email.......

Sept 26, 2008 at Castle Hill, Sydney. 9-Day-Old 250t Liebherr Crane $4mill price tag

Stabilizer punched through the floor, crane boom stopped on a wall for about an hour before it collapsed, allowing the chassis to fall into the basement. No serious injuries - if you don't count checkbooks.

 

[nate_m]

OOPS!

 

[jinman]

Dontcha know Gillespies is so proud to have such widespread advertising?

 

[JB4310]

can't tell for sure but that floor does no look very thick at all, judging by the size of the rubble, maybe not fully cured concrete.
Didn't know they had gillespies down under,
Bad plan.

 

[dynasim]

I worked for a large oil/chemical company, and was part of building a production facility for them. To save using onsite labor, they built the plant in "modules" at a factory, shipped them on trucks to the plant, and assembled them onsite. The biggest modules were 70X12X12 feet, weighed more than 250,000 lbs, and had to be lifted 60 ft in the air.


It turned out that the facility's foundation thickness was set by the need to hold up the crane(the biggest mobile crane in the US). It was something like 5 ft thick, and they used 5 layers of crosshatched oak timbers the prevent punchthrough.

Anyway, the fella that authorized them to drive that beast onto the parking lot should be in big trouble. The surely knew better.

I don't have pictures

Chris

 

[JB4310]

I thought at first it was a parking garage under construction which are built pretty HD, designed for vehicle traffic/parking, but looking at all those partition walls and very small beams and columns in the lower level I think it's just a floor for a commercial building which is much lighter construction designed for foot traffic only. looks like they tried some supplemental shoring below but obviously that wasn't enough. Hardly any rebar and tiny little pcs of rubble, looks like a 4-6" floor!
BIG BIG mistake.

 

[Scooby074]

The floor looked pretty thin in the pics. What were they thinking? Shame, those Liebherr cranes are mighty nice.

 

[Taylortractornut]

They should have laid down mats to spreat the weight out. I ran an old Lima truck crane on a bridge the machine was so big the Carrier had a planetaries in the rears. It also hato be broken down to 3 parts before hauling the counter weight, swing house and the carrier. The house cabsat on a forklift like carriage to raise 10 feet high. When we worked on a bridge we used to lay down 12 inch sollid oak or hickory mats under each out rigger pad. I also had an old 5299 American friction crane find a buried tank on an old TVA almost rollled the old girl.

 

[froggy]

Glad I wasn't the insurance agent!

 

[NuBota]

My first thought - " Looks like the Titanic going down"