COLLAPSE OF CRANE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29657, 30 October 1961, Page 17

COLLAPSE OF CRANE

Three Killed In Melbourne (WJE. Press Assn.— Copyright) MELBOURNE, Oct. 28. Three workmen were killed and three injured when a giant 30-ton crane collapsed and plunged about 100 ft on the partly-construc-ted Colonial Mutual Assurance building in central Melbourne yesiterday. The injured men are in the Royal Melbourne Hospital. but their condition is reported to be “not serious.” Poliee believe the crash occurred when a steel rope jammed in a winding drum and broke. Workers apparently put wedges under the winding drum to hold it, but they failed to do so. This caused the crane and jib to crash, police say. The victims, who. were riggers, had manned the crane to hoist it in readiness for work. If the accident had occurred five minutes later, about 20 others would have been working exactly on the spot where the shattered remnants of crane and debris fell. Thousands of people going to work watched horrified a? the crane and several of the men toppled from above the fifth floor, only 20 feet away from the edge of the crowded Elizabeth and Collins streets intersection. There was a scream of grinding steel as the shattered vertical girders of the crane snaked down and wrapped themselves around the main horizontal girders of the building itself. Masses of pig-iron were catapulted several floors down and outwards to the edge of Elizabeth street. Pedestrians screamed and bolted for shelter as the steel and debris rained down. Police and bystanders had to pacify several women who became hysterical.