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Mayor: No connection between UES crane disasters

BY STEVE RITEA | steve.ritea@newsday.com

10:31 PM EDT, June 1, 2008

As the Manhattan district attorney launches a criminal probe of the crane collapse that killed two construction workers and seriously injured a third, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday the Friday accident appears unrelated to a March crane collapse that killed seven.

"It would appear that there is no connection whatsoever between the two accidents," Bloomberg said at a midtown hotel, after a speech to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. "They're very different things."

That said, he confirmed investigations by city prosecutors, Department of Buildings and by the city's Department of Investigations.

Based on an initial investigation, "it would appear that they had all permits in place and that they had been inspected just two days before," the mayor said.

Bloomberg said residents initially evacuated from nearby buildings have since returned and others who are able to return to their apartments in the building that was struck should be back by midweek.

In the most recent accident, a tower crane on the Upper East Side snapped from its turntable some 200 feet above street level, causing its cab, boom and machine deck to fall south and crash into an apartment building across the street at 354 E. 91st St., authorities said.

That comes two months after a March 15 accident on East 51st Street, in which a steel collar being installed around a crane fell, striking loose another collar below and crashing the crane into a building on which it was working and leveling a town house.

In the wake of the recent accident, all tower crane operations were suspended until today and four cranes similar to the one that collapsed Friday indefinitely had work suspended pending an investigation.

Two workers -- Donald Leo, 30, and Ramadan Kurtaj, 27 -- were killed in Friday's accident and a third, Simeon Alexis, remained hospitalized in serious condition with a chest injury.