‘You could feel the vibration’: Lower Manhattan shudders as giant construction crane collapses during snowstorm
The collapse killed David Wichs, a mathematical whiz who worked at a computerised trading firm, his family said.
A huge construction crane being lowered to safety in a snow squall plummeted onto a Lower Manhattan street Friday, killing a Wall Street worker and leaving three people hurt by debris that scattered as the rig’s lengthy boom fell, officials said.
The mobile crane’s boom landed across an intersection, smashed several car roofs and stretched much of a block after the accident around 8.25am at a historic building about 10 blocks north of the World Trade Centre. Robert Harold heard a crashing sound as the rig fell right outside his office window at the Legal Aid Society.
“You could feel the vibration in the building,” said Harold, who recounted seeing onlookers trying to rescue someone trapped in a parked car and seeing a person lying motionless on the street.
After the collapse, the crane’s big cab lay upside-down in the snow with its tank-like tracks pointed at the sky.
The collapse killed David Wichs, a mathematical whiz who worked at a computerised trading firm, his family said. Born in Prague, he had immigrated to the United States as a teenager and graduated from Harvard University, said his sister-in-law, Lisa Guttman.