Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
Photos: Tribeca Crane Owner Previously Sued Over Faulty Equipment
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 6, 2016
Modified Feb 6, 2016
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Gothamist
View all 13
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 6, 2016
Modified Feb 6, 2016
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
On Friday, one person was killed and three were injured when a giant crane toppled over and crashed onto Worth Street between Church Street and West Broadway in Tribeca. The Police Department and the Buildings Department are both investigating the collapse, trying to understand exactly what went wrong as the 565-feet-tall crane was being lowered to safety during 30 MPH wind gusts. And it seems that the company who owned the crane has been involved in at least two other serious accidents last year.
Horrifying NYC Crane Collapse Caught on Camera
Caught on camera: Watch as a crane collapses in Lower Manhattan, causing panic inside a nearby building. At least one person was killed. Read more: http://nbcnews.to/23NEVd3
Posted by NBC News on Friday, February 5, 2016
The crane collapse occurred just before 8:30 a.m. yesterday. The crane was stationed outside a building at 60 Hudson, which takes up an entire block between West Broadway and Hudson. The crane was inspected by the Buildings Department Thursday because the operating company, Galasso Trucking & Rigging, had requested permission to extend it to its current height. There are some 376 of this type of crane, called a "crawler crane," in use throughout the NYC, and de Blasio ordered all of them to be lowered and secured in the wake of the incident. Seventy-six taller "tower cranes" have also been ordered secured.
"The wind was blowing very strongly from the west down Worth street," Kurt Nelson, who works inside 60 Hudson, told us yesterday. He did not see the crane fall, but tells us, "as soon as I got up to our floor and in the office, the whole building shook violently for a couple seconds, and then I ran back down to the street." Other witnesses told the Times that they could feel the vibration from the crash.
“I thought it was a bomb,” Anatole Kostak, a construction worker, was standing just a block away, told the New Yorker.
While de Blasio said Galasso "was doing the right thing" by attempting to lower the crane yesterday, the Post reports that crane owner Bay Crane is being sued over an accident last May in which a crane dropped a massive heating and air-conditioning unit atop a building in Midtown. “It’s the same crane company?” Gregory Welch, one of the people suing the company, told them. "I hadn’t realized!” Bay Crane worker Timothy Foucher, also suing the company, lost two-thirds of his hand in an accident at La Guardia Airport in March.
Altogether, Bay Crane has been sued five times over accidents in the last four years. The News reported on a similar incident involving the company in 2010:
In March 28, 2010, a 280-foot crane at 80 Maiden Lane smashed into an office building after hours because a hydraulic pump in the rig failed. DOB investigators learned the crane itself was faulty, and OSHA cited Bay Crane for not complying with manufacturer's specifications and limitations.
OSHA hit Bay Crane with a $2,500 fine, but the firm settled without having to pay a dime when OSHA cited Skylift Contracting Corp. of Brooklyn for not instructing workers to recognize unsafe conditions.
The deceased was identified as 38-year-old Upper West Side resident David Wichs, who worked at the New York-based financial trading firm Tower Research Capital. Wichs had just exited his parked vehicle and was standing next to it when the crane came down on him. His sister-in-law, Lisa Guttman, described him to the Post as “the most brilliant person ever,” saying he had immigrated from Prague, Czechoslovakia as a teenager and gone to Harvard University.
“He was an angel, an absolute angel,” a man who identified himself as the family rabbi, told the News. “He was a wonderful, wonderful person. He was the best, the absolute best, and that's what makes this tragedy that much greater."
One of the other people injured in the incident, Dawn Kojima, was on her way to work at the time of the incident. When she heard the screech of the falling metal, she pressed herself up to the nearest building: “I heard something coming down and I looked up,” Kojima told the News from her hospital bed. "I don't know what hit me. It could have been parts of the crane that fell, some of the building, I don't know. It’s hard to describe, it was really painful." She sustained head and leg wounds in the fall.
In a statement, The Historic Districts Council (HDC) sent their condolences to those who were injured in the crash, and said they had long had reservations about the expansions to the building:
60 Hudson Street is an individual landmark and the host building of this morning's disaster. The stewards of this structure have consistently deviated from their master plan and have repeatedly applied to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for piecemeal approvals for the structure's ever-growing industrial needs.
Formerly an office building, 60 Hudson now houses generators and other equipment to support the internet. It has run out of room on the inside of the building for this use. Thus, it keeps adding numerous accretions to the outside building envelope to keep its leases.
HDC testified against these continued enlargements to the 1928 Ralph Walker individual landmark in September 2015, as did Manhattan Community Board 1.
At some point, we must say “stop” to this kind of over-building. It is an avoidable shame when our historic buildings are lost to voracious development - it is an unacceptable tragedy when human lives are lost to the same vice.
Tagged
crane
crane collapse
cranes
death
tribeca
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Early Addition: Who's giving out those chic little Nordic gummies this Halloween?
Because the status trick-or-treat candy has arrived, here are your early links: NYC Marathon-themed early voting sticker, New Jersey's Socialist Party on the rise, Herald Square billboard fight and more.
By
James Ramsay
Published Oct 26, 2026 at 10:01 a.m. ET
In East Brooklyn, aging NYCHA homes get a $636M upgrade
The improvements to at the Reid & Park Rock developments come has the agency wrestles with a multibillion-dollar backlog in needed repairs.
By
Willow Higgins
News
In East Brooklyn, aging NYCHA homes get a $636M upgrade
The improvements to at the Reid & Park Rock developments come has the agency wrestles with a multibillion-dollar backlog in needed repairs.
By
Willow Higgins
What NYers can expect as open enrollment for health insurance begins
By
Caroline Lewis
Why New Yorkers should care about bats beyond spooky season
By
Catalina Gonella
Serbians forced to wait hours to vote at NYC consulate as Balkan nation holds election
By
Jill Webb
and
Michael Sol Warren
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .