Lessons That Stay with You

In 2006 I was a tower crane operator in Seattle. I had spent five years prior erecting tower cranes. That company would call me out to help out when busy on weekends and evenings. I was one of the crane erectors on the tower crane that collapsed in Bellevue two months after we erected it. The specific details might be muddled here as it was 18 years ago. But the overall lesson is so clear in my head. It's one of those lessons I am compelled to share so others don't have to feel one of those things that I get to live with. Matthew Ammon was home in his apartment cooking and died at the end of that crane jib as it came down on his apartment. He was close to my age. I couldn't yet protect him. The problems going on were near my grasp, but I was short of being able to articulate what was wrong. Today, I don't want to be short of articulating when things are wrong. Liked or not, I say it. Matthew Ammon's memory is why.

I was a crane erector. My job was to correctly assemble a crane. We did that part. When we were assembling the crane, there was a problem. The frame it was on was allowing too much movement. I couldn't articulate why it was wrong, but it was a red flag. One I would need to hand off to someone else. We did that. We were told it was planned for. Carry on. (For those curious, the crane was out of level on the beams at 1:96. The tolerance is 1:500. The debate for us erectors was with regard to checking that with just the counterjib hanging. You 100% can check the level with the counter jib hanging at the base. This will correlate with the plumb. If you do have movement outside of 1:500, the crane is definitely out of plumb and you should stop. Articulating this at the time was outside of my larger understanding.)

I was home doing laundry months later when my wife said a crane went down. I knew what it would be before I saw it. The red flag was right. As I progressed in my career I gained the ability to articulate problems at a deeper level. The challenge of that is that I can't set it aside anymore. I'm compelled to speak up. I don't have room for another tenant in my head.

I can't fight everyone's fight. But a place I see a large need is with regard to how we attach things to cranes. From the base of the crane to the straps it's all meant to be rated. And then people will literally lift a cardboard box on straps. Pallets held together by nails. Everyone knows that nails are great in tension (/s). Plastic box of unknown age and rating? "Strap it up. I'll yell overhead." OSHA and ASME both require everything to be rated. That wooden box you are using... what's it rated for? In Canada, in almost every province, they cite ASME. Did you know that ASME cites steel as the materials required for their rating? These are details we have ignored at our peril. If it contains or supports a load, it is required to have a rating.

I am a salesman of crane attachments. It's not because I love crane attachments. It's because I can get behind solving this problem. It's because it's a problem I can articulate and help save a life at this stage of my own life. I'll never know the life that I save in this last part of my career. I just know they are out there living life. I got a call from a contractor that experienced a death recently. And I've heard this frustration from others. They just want to solve it so they don't face it again. The problem is that the feeling comes after. "I could have stopped this, but I didn't." "What can I do to improve." becomes that overwhelming feeling. You can take steps to prevent that feeling. Or you can just wait for it.

I don't even care if you buy from me. If you take a look at your issues and see something crane rated with others that solves the issue, please, get it. Your whole crane safety program is worthless if you are just going to put things to be lifted into a box that is going to fall apart in the sky. The analog to consider is, if I showed up with a concrete bucket made of wood and told you it's rated for what the straps are rated for, you'd know I was a kook. Where is the difference from that to lifting up a box nailed together with no rating? Cranes aren't fuzzy things. Crane operations are clear, precise, and they have built in safety factors. If you don't know what they are, you are about to do something illegal. More importantly, you are risking the burden of losing someone. Even when that someone is someone you don't know, and if it ultimately isn't your fault, you won't care for that burden at all.