FRU crews secure collapsed crane

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:57 am

Bit late but I thought I post it under this section, we dfone to one and all

In late July, Control took a call to “Crane fallen onto roadway” at Westminster Bridge Road at 7.33pm. Southwark’s pump ladder was mobilised with Watch Manager Kevin Richards in charge takes up the story.

“When we arrived at the scene, I was met by a police officer who told me that a mobile crane had fallen to the edge of the roof area of a large building under construction. I sent a crew led by our crew manager (CM) to the 13th floor to confirm that nobody was injured, carry out a dynamic risk assessment and give me a full description of the incident. Information came back that a one tonne crane had toppled over, nobody was involved and approximately 20 contractors were still at roof level trying to secure the crane which was looking very unstable. I immediately requested two fire rescue units (FRUs) with line rescue capability.

“The FRUs from Chelsea and Clerkenwell quickly arrived and after a discussion with the crew managers in charge we decided our three main objectives were to secure the crane so it couldn’t fall off the building, retrieve the crane and turn it back on its feet and retrieve the crane’s attachments or ‘payload’ that were hanging down from the building. I appointed a sector commander and a safety officer and both FRU crews rigged in their line harnesses and took their equipment to roof level.

“The crane was a small unit which would normally stand on four legs and looked a little like a horse. The payload of metal fixings that had been attached to the crane was too heavy and had caused the crane to capsize with the jib hanging over the building and two of the legs in the air. We achieved our first objective, to secure the crane, by using two tag lines which were connected to either side of the crane and anchored to two structural pillars.

“Level two line operations were then put in place to find out the integrity of the jib. Once this was done we made a plan to right the crane back onto its legs at roof level using two Tirfor winches that were attached to the crane using strops (leather straps used for lifting heavy weights) and ‘D’ shackles (stainless steel shackles). The front legs of the crane were then secured to anchor points on the roof creating a pivot allowing crews to pull the rear legs down to their original position and so righting the crane.

“This then left the problem of the unsecured and overweight load that was still hanging out over the building. We decided we would need to use a rope grab and pulley on a tag line to physically pull the heavy load back onto the roof. This would mean upending the large metal container, so firefighters, secured with lines were deployed to manually unload the container before this could take place. The FRU crews then secured the container on the roof using the rope grab and pulley.”

Monitoring Officer Steve Dudeney said: “This was a unique and complex incident that demonstrated the quality of our FRU equipment and training. Without the FRUs, there would have been considerable delays and disruption to this very busy area of central London. As it was, we were able to clear the site and hand the road back to the police by midnight. I was also impressed with the way the incident commander kept a very tight control over operations from street level using good command and communication channels and our liaison with all the other services involved.”