Crane Collapses on NYC Apartment Buildings; 4 Dead, 17 Hurt

NEW YORK (AP) _ Rescue crews sifted through piles of rubble Sunday morning searching for survivors after a towering crane at a construction site toppled like a tree across a city block, destroying buildings and killing at least four people.

At least 17 others were injured in what he called one of New York City's worst construction accidents. The dead were all believed to be construction workers.

The crane split into pieces as it fell Saturday afternoon, pulverizing a four-story townhouse and demolishing parts of five other buildings. The collapse devastated the affluent block on Manhattan's East Side: Cars were overturned and crushed. A huge dust cloud rose over the neighborhood. Rubble was piled several stories high.

John LaGreco, owner of the Fubar tavern on the townhouse's ground floor, returned to the devastated scene on Sunday morning. An employee and a second person in the bar, which was closed, had been rescued, he said.

''It's unbelievable that this happened,'' LaGreco said. ''We're going to sue the hell out of them, of course.''

On Sunday morning, construction crews positioned a second crane to help remove pieces of the white crane that crushed the townhouse, and started removing piles of bricks and debris left in the middle of the street. A briefing was planned for later Sunday morning.

Several blocks remained blocked off through the night and some residents were forced to stay at a nearby high school serving as a Red Cross shelter.

Carolyn Cempa was at lunch with her husband when the accident happened. They went to the Red Cross shelter to get information on when they could return home and how badly their building had been damaged. She said she has heart medicine in her apartment that she badly needs.

''The fireman came over and said it's not safe, maybe tomorrow,'' she said. ''That's not good.''

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the intensive rescue operation would continue all night to find anyone possibly trapped in the rubble on 51st Street near 2nd Avenue. One man was pulled from a brownstone 3½ hours after the building was crushed, but no one else was reported found.

Eight people remained hospitalized Sunday, including three who were in critical condition, Fire Department officials said. Nine others were treated at the scene, including five firefighters who suffered minor injuries, officials said.

Rescue crews were using search dogs, thermal-imaging cameras and listening devices. Two other large cranes were brought in to lift debris.

He called the work ''painstaking,'' and said rubble was being removed carefully, sometimes by hand, to prevent further collapse.

The big, white crane stood at least 19 stories high and had been attached to the side of a half-built high rise. When it toppled from its base on the sidewalk, part of it landed on a four-story brownstone, and turned it into a pile of brick.

''It's a horrible situation, very gory. There's blood in the street,'' said Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who takes over as governor for disgraced Eliot Spitzer on Monday.

But residents said they were grateful the accident occurred on a weekend when the area was not full of people.

Bryan Beus, an assistant for an artist who had office space in the crushed brownstone, said nearly $100,000 worth of art was lost. ''We would be dead if it wasn't on a Saturday,'' he said.

LaGreco, of FuBar, said his employee, Juan Perez, was the man pulled from the rubble. He said Perez suffered a broken leg. All of his employees were accounted for.

''Our bar is done,'' he said. ''The crane crashed the whole building. If I wasn't watching a Yankees game, I would've come to work early and gotten killed.''

About 19 of the planned 43-story condominium had been erected, and the crane was scheduled to be extended Saturday so workers could start work on a fresh story, said an owner of the company that manages the construction site.

A piece of steel fell and sheared off one of the ties holding it to the building, causing it to detach and topple, said Stephen Kaplan, an owner of the Reliance Construction Group.

''It was an absolute freak accident,'' Kaplan said. ''All the piece of steel had to do was fall slightly left or right, and nothing would have happened.''

Kaplan said the company had subcontracted the work to different companies and was not in charge of the crane. Phone messages and an e-mail left for the crane's owner, New York Crane & Equipment Corp., were not returned.

James Kennelly, the lead partner at East 51st Development Company, which owns the property, issued a written statement expressing the group's dismay over the accident.

''There are no words to describe the level of devastation we feel today as a result of this tragic event,'' he said, extending prayers to the families of the dead and injured.

Neighborhood residents said they had complained to the city several times about the construction at the site, saying crews worked illegal hours and the building was going up too fast.

City officials said they had issued 13 violations to the site in the last 27 months, a normal amount for a project of that size. Inspectors examined the crane Friday and found nothing wrong with it.

City Building Department records showed that on March 4, a caller told officials that the upper portions of the crane appeared to lack the proper number of safety ties attaching it to the building.

A city inspector visited the site and determined on March 6 that no violation was warranted.

The collapse comes amid a building boom in New York City and follows a spate of construction accidents in recent months, including some involving cranes.

New York Crane was involved in a 2006 mishap, in which a 13-foot piece of a crane mast that was being dismantled fell into the street and crushed a taxi cab.

At a Donald Trump hotel-condominium tower, a worker plummeted 40 stories to his death last month when a concrete form gave way. A month before that, a crane's nylon sling broke away and dropped seven tons of steel onto a construction trailer across from ground zero, injuring an architect.

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Associated Press Writers Pat Rizzo and Verena Dobnik contributed to this report.

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