Worthing crane collapse
The jury in a coroner’s inquest in Worthing has ruled that the deaths of two men during the de-rigging of a crane in the seaside town were an accident. The jury heard that Stephen Boatman and Gary Miles had been fatally injured when the crane on which they were standing collapsed.
David Smith, who was injured in the accident, explained that Boatman had told him to de-torque bolts on the first crane in preparation for its dismantling. He had moved up the crane and loosened 16 heavy duty bolts. On reaching the top of the crane, he asked for the tower to be turned to allow him access to the other side. At this point, the crane tipped forward, hitting a second crane. Smith was left hanging from the structure, but Boatman and Miles fell over 100 ft (30m), suffering fatal chest and head injuries.
Expert witnesses told the inquest into the accident at Durrington High School that de-torquing of bolts is a normal practice when dismantling cranes. However, the bolts should have been de-torqued from 110Kg/m to around 30Kg/m, the level at which they could later be removed with a spanner. In this case, they were loosened further, to a point where they could have been removed by hand.
Smith explained that Boatman had instructed him to detorque the bolts to ‘finger looseness’, and he believed he had been acting as instructed. Although all three men had many years of experience derigging tower cranes, none of them had any formal qualifications – indeed, the inquest heard that there is currently no formal training process for crane rigging and derigging.
The CITB and CPA first planned a qualification scheme after the May 2000 collapse of a similar crane at Canary Wharf in London, which killed three people. This accident prompted concern in the industry at the lack of a nationally recognised training programme. They developed a Tower Crane Installation Training Programme, which was launched at SED in May 2004. They are now working on NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) Level 2 and Level 3 structures for Plant Installation (Tower Cranes), which should be available in the first half of 2007.
