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Toppled crane kills four in NYC

Rescue crews worked through the night on Saturday and into yesterday morning sifting through piles of rubble in search of 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.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at least 10 people were injured in what he called one of the city's worst construction accidents. The dead were all believed to be construction workers.

The crane split into pieces as it fell on Saturday afternoon, pulverizing a four-story town house 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.

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

New York Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said that 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 the debris three-and-a-half hours after the building was crushed.

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 building and turned it into a pile of brick.

About 19 stories of the planned 43-story building had been erected and the crane was scheduled to be extended on Saturday.

A piece of steel fell and sheared off one of the ties holding the crane to the building, causing it to detach and fall over, 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."
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