The accident, in St Petersburg on the west coast of Florida, happened on January 25 as six mobile cranes on hire from Kelley Equipment were moving a pipe for Progress Energy, a coal and electricity company based in the south eastern US. The crane’s superstructure was torn from the carrier, flinging operator George Huffman from his cab. The 45-year-old escaped with no injuries, luckily.
In the same week, legislators in nearby Miami-Dade Country moved forward with Commissioner Audrey Edmonson’s ordinance to impose tough lift planning and safety regulations on local crane firms (there’s no indication that the St Petersburg accident would have been prevented by this rule change).
The ordinance applies to most medium capacity or larger mobile and tower cranes, along with construction hoists and some types of aerial work platforms. It sets an inspection regime for lifting equipment, requiring an inspection every six month, with additional inspectors’ visits when a tower crane is installed for the first time, or after a hurricane. Sites would be responsible for configuring cranes to reduce risk when a hurricane approaches. Operators would need to be certified, to undergo a physical, and to pass a drugs test. The local Office of Building Code Compliance’s inspectors would be able to revoke a site’s building permit if the regulations were not followed.
Miami-Dade is the US’s eighth largest county, by population, with more than 2m residents, so changes here may be an indication of how policy is heading across the country. The proposals mirror changes in Washington State, at the opposite end of the US, where the state legislature has also put into place crane inspection and operator certification requirements.
