You could tell it wasn't going to end well right from the start. The wanker on the forklift "spearing" the valve ends of the oxygen tanks when they fell over was a pretty good indicator!! :)
That was beautiful. I guess they don't hire engineers in Australia for demolition projects. I especially liked the cylinder valve beating forklift operator, he really set the tone for things to come.
Anyone with even a fundamental knowledge of structures and structural stability would know that the beam connecting the two legs was a tension tie holding the two legs in position. As the video clearly shows, when you cut through that tension member the structure loses all stability and collapses. These people have absolutely no business attempting this type of work. This is not an accident, it's idiocy.
they had two 100ton excavators to hold Aframe together with massive steel cables... one of the excavators broke down so they used a 65ton excavator on one of the cables...you saw what happened next ....trust me ..I was there..dickhead engineers .... guy in the boom lift never worked there again.. boomlift was squashed
I'm an Aussie and have spent enough years in steel construction which was not much different from steel demolition in fact. An honest answer here is that most of the workers would have been too pissweak to speak up and to say 'Stop this shit'. And second I'll bet my gonads that the person running this circus would have been a 'Bigmouth' who easily had everyone follow him because the easiest way you do that, is by making anyone who wants to THINK FOR THEMSELVES look like a wimp in the eyes of everyone else. (That's their biggest weakness). So all are too timid and don't want to take the risk at looking like a girl, even if that means saving lives. I've been on jobs where steel and gear is falling from above but if you tie stuff off, the bigmouths and boofheads snigger "Wod are ya"?
+mspenrice Hillbillies the bloody lot of them....... Somebody should be in gaol for these very practices. I'll say my opinion again that my own experiences tell me that its a 'big mouth' at the back pushing ordinary men along. And for far too long they've used the bullying tactic of calling any person who talks safety, a wimp and a 'girl'. Its all push push push until someone gets hurt or killed. From a boy to a grown man, I spent 29yrs and 6 months watching my own Father sitting at home every single day hardly able to move and with permanent brain damage. He was a rigger on steel construction and paid the price for these stupid types of practices. Coming home in one piece at the end of every day is far more important than than any job and you are more important a person than the 'Cowboy' who thinks he can push men into putting their lives on the line..... Fuck that!
+Tom Tee, You might feel a little better to know that it's not just Australia that has problems like this. It may be that its, not that people don't want to think for themselves, it's that they just don't give a fuck. I think they derive a certain pleasure from watching the big mouthed guy in charge screw up. Either way, it's not right. I'm an electrician and when I was on a job with a loud-mouthed, ego driven, my way or the highway type foreman, the job always has bad moral and it causes all sorts of problems, I dreaded even showing up. On a job with a foreman that treats his men with respect, the guys will go above and beyond for him. How these bad foreman stay employed is beyond me, but they do, they are very good at deceiving their higher ups and deflecting the blame. Now, when I run jobs, I remember what it was like on jobs with a bad boss, that barking/belittling people gets you nowhere. I'd be happy if someone pointed out something unsafe, they are only making my life easier only fucked up people would ridicule someone for doing that! If my project manager tries to speed things up without giving me the proper resources/manpower he can screw off! Especially if he tries to get us to work an excessive amount of overtime, yes the money is nice but doing 5-6/10-12 hr days for weeks on end is ridiculous, production, moral, and safe work practices/carelessness go way down. Some people, especially younger guys love it but IMO it's just not worth it. Treat people as you would like to be treated, it's a simple but effective rule to follow.
You're quite right about the long hours....the body may go the 12 hour days for weeks on end...but the mental clarity goes bad after 8-9 hours.....I was working on a Bio-Mass power-plant as mechanic/welder a few years ago.....12 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months (if you were in the middle of a repair at your 12 hours...you stayed until it was done)....some days were from 7AM until waaaay past mid-night....and of course return tomorrow (or later this morning) at 7AM.....later...when I had time to visit my friends....they said...."You looked 1/2 dead when you were working that job".....
i bet the guy in the forklift was still trying to knock off those cylinder valves with his forks after the collapse. this should be a training film or a new 10 stooges movie
No One was killed in this accident. The man doing the welding fell under neath a steel beam that bent and buckled and this saved his life as the buckle was exactly above him protecting him. Very good video - well done. Amazing to see how quickly it came down leaving no time to escape and the danger of that a work place can entrail. I think this is a very dangerous way to take the crane down - you gotto be mad to be doing what they attempted.
Cut away the part holding two wheeled platforms together and you'll get the roll-away, followed by the collapse of the main structure falling down into the splaying gap. Any one of these should have looked at this and thought "Ummm...if that is cut and that bogey runs that way and this one runs this way, then the crane on top...will....be....falling somehwere in between this struc...GUYS! GUYS! STOP!"
+jerry arnold (jdawgsworld) And an expensive one, too. This company screens it out in the interviewing process in order to deliver better value to their customers.
This is what happens when the cheapest contractor wins the bid. No site discipline, ridiculous plan to cut the structure. Too cheap to hire a crane and do the job safely.....the crane would have been a maximum of $2k for the entire day, so management are telling you this guy's life was worth $2k to them. Speak up, say no and let management eat their profits.
...somewhere there's a video on RU-vid of tear-down of a big hoist/crane like this...Netherlands or somewhere.........start at the top, 2-3 cranes for support.....remove all ...piece by piece.....no accidents....crane was then moved to Korea and re assembled.....
The guy videoing seems to be on the same page as the demo guys, they think they are going to have to use the excavators to pull the legs apart. Any kid that's played with blocks would know those legs were going to spread when the steel holding them together was cut. I have to believe they did something like chock the wheels to keep the legs from spreading, but they underestimated the forces, by a lot. How could all the guys on that job not know it was going to come down, it's mind boggling. If the guy that owns the demo company has to have a license, it should be taken away, they were in way over their head.
I stand corrected. According to informed sources, Mr Greg Rees was not killed in this mishap. He died about a year later, whilst demolishing the last ore bridge (crane) of several which were torn down at the site. There is no known recording of that event. It would seem after experiencing this catastrophic failure, the company DMX Partners, would change their shoddy practices. Sadly for him they did not. Yes, RIP Brother Union Boiler-maker Greg Rees. Thank you also for the note of appreciation from The Rees family. May God grant you comfort.
This is a direct tension failure of the tension strut in the a-frame (as people have previously commented). I would be surprised that any engineer would have specified attacking the tie member like this. As everyone has already said, it's unfortunately also pretty obvious. They may have been trying to weaken the structure and went too far or possibly miscalculated the load/dynamic effects on the tie member during cutting. Would be interesting to see any reports on this.
They expected a leg which is slanted, to not slide sideways when cut??? Clearly, the bottom horizontal part is in tension between the two legs and the top leg attachment wasn't designed to resist the twisting force from the leverage of the long legs.
Wow and that major fuck-up was just a side show to what was coming. How does a rack of bottles come to be lying on its side in 1st place? What a bunch of clowns.
ngaire nordli well let me think on that.he was using a cutting torch, maybe the bottles were there for him to stand on?you know for what he couldnt reach with the lift.or they were spent and they didnt want the crane to fall on them.
joseph fulks Kindly educate yourself on just how high a pressure those OXYGEN bottles are filled to and let me know if you would stand on TOP of a crate of 16 of them when operating a cutting torch. :-) Have a wonderful life! PS - That crate probably weighed a good 1500kg.
NOT EXACTLY. Soldering is a fabrication or repair method. You heat metal by many different means, apply solder and some sort of flux material. Gas welding is done nearly the same way, usually without a flux. In electric welding, a solid flux is coated to the electrode or gas or powder flux is used. This process along with 'soldering' is used to bond two or more bits of metal together. The demolition of this crane has nothing to do with "soldering" what so ever. In "cutting" up scrap steel, one uses a flammable gas, CNG LNG, LPG, butane, acetylene or another 'cutting' mixture, along with pure oxygen to heat the steel. Once it reaches it's critical melting point, high pressure oxygen stream is introduced through a hole in the center of the burning tip. 'Cutting' steel is a misnomer as you are actually BURNING up the metal in the kerf by nearly instantaneous oxidation. A really good cut gives off little in the way of sparks. I welcome comments from anyone with more "soldering" facts which I may have inadvertently missed. Thank you. Be safe. Doc
timlad5 Seriously? These are completly different processes. Soldering connects two metal parts with different metal that melts at lower temperature than metal being connected that stay solid (imagine trying to "glue" something with water-ice in freezing conditions), welding involves melting connected metal, sometimes even withoud adding any new material to connection (imagine connecting two ice cubes by slightly heating them up and then freezing them again). BTW this is neither welding nor soldering in this video, it's just cutting with some sort of a cutting torch.
I'm sorry but are they thick or something. When they demolished the cranes where I live they cut them up from the top and worked down, taking each cut section down safely with another crane.
Yeah, thats it, almost done cutting a main support beam on a crane big enough to have a building on it.....yup....alllllmmmmmmooosssst there............
In addition to this incident, were the initiators of the project held to account for employing cowboys who clearly must have had problems on previous contracts?
Cotronixco The welders lift was under it. if he was tied off, as wood be proper procedure in the U.S. he would not have been able to get out. I have no doubt there were injuries and likely at least one casualty. 😢
Makes the fork lift drivers accident look mild in comparison. I can't believe this was in Australia, i've always thought we had some of the best health and safety requirements in the world, obviously i'm wrong. Pity the camera man didn't hold his nerve and film it, i'd like to see how that big cherry picker ended up where it did
Looks like the bureaucrats at WorkCover, the Australian equivalent of OSHA, didn't bother to train or certify their inspectors in certain specialized fields, and resisted all attempts to correct the matter, and threatened the jobs of their employees when they brought up unsafe working conditions. The guy on the picker survived, but later on, there was another demo accident where one person was killed & 4 injured. (Workcover Inspectors "Untrained". Broadcast: 30/04/2004 Reporter: Sarah Schofield)
That's why you put the cameras on tripods and leave them the fk alone. Amature ruined what would have been a fantstic piece of evidence and learning tool.
Apparently the fellow doing the torching fell out of the lift and miraculously survived, but there was a fatal accident at this same site later which resulted in the death of a man.
The minute I started watching this video, I just started thinking what the hell are they doing. It was instantaneously obvious what the outcome would be. Did not one single worker there have the basic mechanical understanding of what would happen once you cut through that crossmember. Surely the "engineers" (ha ha) or whoever must have discussed the best and safest way to do this demo. My brain will forever be boggled at this act.
This is the worst violation of common safety practices and common sense that I have ever seen. The guy in the fork lift is just plain ignorant and it is amazing that half of them didn't die. The work site should have been shut down, vacated and investigated immediately. The company doing the work was obviously completely amateurish and the workers have little safety training.
The problem was the WorkCover government inspector was equally unqualified to judge the safety of this worksite, because the heads of that agency at the time had their heads up their asses, getting high on their own fumes. (They didn't understand that some of their inspectors needed specialized training, and any staff that brought up unsafe working conditions was threatened with dismissal.)
You are utterly incorrect. I was in OH&S (assessment and accident investigation) for more than a decade (retired 2012) and the great majority of industrial accidents, particularly those in construction and heavy industry, are due to the worker *not following safe work procedures*. Under legislation in force now - and certainly in force when I was in the profession - every employer must engage in risk management and safe work practice. Look at that site: it is literally an accident waiting to happen! If no risk assessment was done before work started then those blokes had every *legal* right in the world to refuse duty until an assessment - and then a list of risk management steps - had been done and issued. And if they are ignoring procedures that may have been issued then they are also legally at fault. My guess is that some cowboy contractor has got the job to demolish that crane and has never heard of the term "risk management".
Yep,I do something similar for living new,here in Czech republic where most ppl are from Ukraine..never saw a construction site before- not easy to make them to respect all the rules we teach them and let them sign rules that they have to follow while on site or using a tower crane 🏗.... Others do it for over 20years are used to doing it their way and if you come up with any rules then they are pissed...(too slow,too stupid) so on... But hey, that's their choice...no respect..no job...always can go back home and cry about it,- still better then seeing something like this... Forklifter would go home with a nice fat fee for that lifting also....but as a safety/crane coordinator..would stoop it all right away...somebody was missing here or was fucki** his co-worker in the ass while this was going on.... I m hated until something happens..then respect comes along... Take care everyone!
Can't tell if "doesn't know how gravity works" or sarcasm. Seriously, there's documented evidence of people that would (and have) cut out the supports of the thing that's supporting them. So I'm honestly not sure anymore. Oh, now I've made myself sad. (last line is Futurama reference, possibly slightly butchered).
I must remember that if I ever get to have a video camera trained on somethjing like that: It is always more dramatic to hold it in my hand, not two hands, just one -and preferably with my arm outstretched (whilst scratching my backside with the spare.)
HERE IS THE KICKER. Mr. Rees was a union boilermaker. A few months earlier his parents wrote a letter to "Workcover", the government entity responsible for workplace safety in NSW. They expressed their concern because the of way the ore bridges were being demolished. The demo company had used the same method taking down the previous cranes, it fell in nearly the same manner. 3 men were almost crushed. Viewing the video of that incident prompted their letter.
+mspenrice No one died in THIS incident. That guy on the cherry picker landed in a spot that a bent girder protected. However, they had another incident after this one which killed one guy & injured four more.
They should have been put out of business after this incident. they obviously have no regard for safety and whom ever is engineering these projects does not belong in this business.
We used an oxy-lance to split 2 two columns of a boring mill ; the 2 columns fell to left and right, torch man was ok. We ALSO split 2 legs of a gantry crane- BUT before you cut the leg brace, MAKE SURE it's supported, OR cable the two TOGETHER, so the cross-brace can be cut apart safely and allow the legs to spread apart S L O W L Y (if so designed- as ours was)- In our case we kept the main bridge up with 140 ton crane... a baby compared to this job! Quelle Tragedie !
I'm not sure if they guy cutting the cross member jumped out of the basket and got away or got crushed. But seeing him torching trough this part my expectation was that the legs would spread out, and this happened, this breakdown could only been managed in a safe way by using a cutting charge on this cross member, as there is now way to dismantle this crane safe by cutting it with a torch
The video is about a near miss a year before a fatal accident doing the same job, the demolition of the Newcastle BHP steelworks The man who died is . Mr Gregory Rees 2.26 Mr Gregory Rees was killed on 19 September 2002 when he was crushed during the demolition of No 6 Ore Bridge at the former Newcastle BHP Steelworks site at Port Waratah. Mr Rees was employed by Demtech Pty Ltd.19 2.27 On 29 July 2003, WorkCover sent a report on the death of Mr Rees to the Newcastle Coroner’s Court.
That would've passed through an engineering report before demolition, they're normally extremely rigorous, all materials would've been removed Asbestos, and anything flammable. Don't know how they got away with that one..
i will say that irrespective of the management's culpability, the guy holding the torch is as good a position as anyone to see what could happen. directing risky operations is bad, but so is actually doing it.
They cut from the bottom. The parts that he's cutting are on two separate legs with wheels that go on a train track. When he cuts the support off, they slide outward from the weight of the stuff on top, causing everything to fall. You are supposed to do this starting at the top, taking things down safely instead of this stupid shit. I didn't have to be there to understand how the physics work. lol What they did was retarded and someone should have stopped them.
doesnt take an expert to know that they are cutting short cuts and the proper way is to dismantle it the same way it was built . some cheap fuckers just trying to save a buck and demolish it vs dismantling it the same way it was put together
what a mary on the camera ! all that distance away from it and the fem got all shook up and scared and missed the shot by flinching what a jerk! there goes his chance to work for nbc lol !!!!!
At first I thought he was just cutting the compression legs and I was thinking they were going to let it settle then back off and pull the legs out. Ok, would have made sense. But apparently the tension (cross) member was precut also. This would make the way it fell entirely predictable. Could they not even afford some chain restraints? Our local water operator had a somewhat smaller rail crane removed. Due to the difficulty, the removal bill was for more than the original construction.
How did this wind up? There were a lot of workers right there when it fell, did everyone escape? Did the oxygen tanks have anything to do with the demolition? Thanks!
I do see your point my good sir! Being someone with barely any experience from only light construction and demolition work, i am quite mystified myself! Or maybe i should say being someone with a sense of ******* self preservation, cause to me that's really all it should take to make the decision not to cut that brace. I want to live! Liiiiive! =D
many people have been killed with the cut away technique, i was working in a building when I noticed my colleagues had cut through every stanchion more than 75%, they never got me back in that building but ordered me in which i refused.
I was amazed that there wasn't a fireball when he did that. He could have easily snapped a valve off those cylinders w/ sparks from that action could have ignited the escaping gas. This clip should be an OSHA training film of what not to do.
Total insanity. I can hardly believe what I just watched. I just cannot get my head around how anyone would even consider demolishing a structure that way.
I was there that Day...standing on the wharf...nobody died ..guy cutting the Aframe jumped out of boomlift and landed in a hollow spot left by a bogged frontend loader earlier in the day...engineered demolition....NOT....still gives me nightmares
