Death by Crane
Coverage of Bellevue crane accident off the mark

By AL PEPPARD
Guest Writer

The recent crane accident in Bellevue brought about the most bizarre newspaper coverage imaginable. I say bizarre because of the focus on the operator rather than on the equipment.

Let me present my credentials on cranes and crane accidents. I started my four-year apprenticeship as a carpenter with Local 131 here in Seattle in 1962. For the greater part of the time I worked “under the crane” in high-rise building and bridge work. I also worked for a short time as a carpenter in the shipyards.

It was at Todd Shipyard in 1963 that I got my first taste of what crane accidents can do. I was working in another part of the yard and an old gantry crane that Todd had bought secondhand from the Grand Coulee Dam construction was lifting a load with the load line while raising the whip block. The limit switch on the whip line failed, allowing it to “two-block” and part the line. The five-ton block fell and struck a young apprentice machinist who just happened to be passing by. It drove him through the dock. His brother was unable to make a positive identification of the body. The newspaper coverage was only a few lines the next day and drew no conclusions. The fault was clearly lack of maintenance on the part of Todd.

Less than two years later, while working on the I-5 bridges over King and Jackson streets, my partner and I heard a tremendous crash — the sort of sound that in bridge work usually signals death or serious injury. The boom on the mobile crane that was on one of the partially-finished bridges had fallen into the middle of a crew pouring concrete on the last bridge to the west, over Jackson. Everybody on the job rushed to the accident to render assistance.

We put together temporary ramps to carry the dead and dying to the ambulances that parked in the road that cut north of the bridge. Four or five laborers who had been hit by the boom looked bad, but still seemed to be breathing. At the bottom of a cell was the body of a cement finisher who had been hit by the falling cement bucket. He was covered with cement, dirt, and blood. He was clearly dead. We learned later he was to retire in two weeks.

As soon as the injured were removed, the bosses started yelling at us to get back to work, the show was over. We never did hear the fate of the workers we carried off, but the old hands guess that just about all of them were done for. Years later, I still have nightmares from this one.

There was no mention of this accident in newspapers or on television. To the media, it was a non-event. Only workers had been hurt and killed. The accident was clearly caused by bad maintenance. The main drive chain on the crane had failed.

I witnessed a few more crane accidents as well. I won’t bore the reader with them. I can only say that there were fewer of them after our last liberal president, Richard Nixon, signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act into law.

This brings us to the recent fatal accident in Bellevue. In this case, the victim was an innocent bystander, not covered by the state industrial insurance law. For that reason, his family can sue, as can the owners of the damaged apartment building.

So what is different here? The day after the event, one-inch headlines on page 1 of the Post-Intelligencer proclaimed, “Operator in Crane Wreck Has History of Drug Abuse.” When there is a risk to the insurers of the construction company, there is an immediate hue and cry to find fault with the operator.

The accident was clearly failure of the base unit due to metal fatigue. Yet for days, the media coverage talked about the operator’s private life. Then most recently, had he “weathervaned” the crane — freeing it to drift in the wind — before shutting down? This was the silliest issue yet, because he was still in the cab. If the crane had failed some hours later, that question might have made some sense. The fact is there is not much an operator can do to cause a tower to fall at that point, especially with no load on the line.

There was a great deal of talk about lack of state certification of operators. On union jobs, the operators are journeymen from the International Brotherhood of Operating Engineers. I’ll take their word on qualifications ahead of any state agency. Also on union jobs, if the guys under the crane don’t trust the operator, we walk off. And that is all there is to it.

So why doesn’t the media look to the greed of the construction companies driving the workers to make hay while the sun shines at the cost of safety, instead of slinging mud at a worker who was also the victim of this tragedy?

Al Peppard is Vice President of the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans, from whose newsletter, “The Advocate,” this story was republished. You can reach the alliance at (206)448-9646.

Photo by Brooke Kempner