everybody who lived at the Electra on east 91st street knew that the crane next door was gonna come down. really. all of them. they said so to the reporters. there had been a few stop-work orders at the construction site, so maybe some of those people picked up the phone from time to time, complained.
many new yorkers, myself included, don’t walk down streets where such cranes are mounted because we have always intuited that they are dangerous. many of us don’t walk on top of the sidewalk grates for the same reason (even though this gets you deathlooks from jersey commuters who don’t know enough not to walk on the grates themselves and don’t understand why you will not, NOT, take two steps to the right to let them pass).
about a year ago, michael lifrieri — an extremely conscientious “oiler” — did an in-depth inspection of the crane he was assigned to oil and discovered a widening crack. the crane was taken out of service for repair. (thank god. can you imagine a crane falling down on west 46th street?)
the same type of defect seems to have caused the crash on friday, and it may even be exactly the same defective PART that was taken off the bad crane last year, though michael daly says there is “at least a slight chance the cause may turn out to be something else altogether.” a slight chance? that’s CYA newspaperspeak, like the word alleged, just everyday lawsuit prevention.
mayor bloomberg characterized the latest accident as “unnacceptable and intolerable” in an attempt to differentiate it from all those acceptable, tolerable crane crashes we have from time to time around the city. robert limandri, the new construction commissioner, said “this cannot happen any more.”
oh no? the remaining kodiak 300 cranes, now obsolete, were all made about thirty years ago and have no predetermined end-of-life. like cars, you can run them into the ground if you want, as long as you get them inspected. in other words, these cranes WILL operate until they fall apart. and when cranes fall apart, people are killed and homes destroyed. it is not a question of if, but a question of when — and limandri isn’t the only one who knows this.
DESPITE THE FACT THAT OPERATOR ERROR WAS NOT INVOLVED in either crane disaster, there seems to be a concerted effort to emphasize the lack of training that such operators received. newscast after newscast bemoaned the fact that there is a “shortage of crane operators” and that some start the job with “only 40 hours of training” in comparison with several hundred hours of training required in other cities and countries.
CRANE OPERATORS ARE EXTREMELY WELL PAID. donald leo, the operator killed last friday, led quite the dream lifestyle — proposed to his fiancee while on vacation in cabo, threw his bachelor party in the dominican republic, booked a june honeymoon in greece. you can’t do that on a teacher’s salary, and it takes a helluva lot longer than forty hours to become a teacher. so why is there a shortage of trained operators? because the nyc construction industry is run by organized crime. do i think the late mr. leo was all mobbed up? maybe. the fact that his priest, the one who would have performed his wedding, went out of his way to bless the construction worker’s union when he was blessing the newly dead donald reeks of Godfather. his family will not say one word to the press — which is understandable, it’s just that most families don’t know how to DO that, it is not easy to keep the press away when you are at the center of the news splash of the day. and fiance janine belcastro’s statement on friday was disturbingly composed: “My heart is broken. I’m devastated. I’ll miss his sense of humor and his laugh.” can’t say for sure, but if my fiance had just fallen off a skyscraper i doubt that i would be delivering perfect soundbites. and i know for SURE you wouldn’t find me with my hair all neat and my face all washed with pretty pink lip gloss perfect on my mouth the very next day (sunday daily news front page photo).
MY CRYSTAL BALL SAYS that people who could have (and should have) taken that crane out of service knew exactly what was wrong with it and did not take action because of financial considerations, and that this will come out in the investigation. i don’t think belcastro will file a lawsuit because those who seek to avoid further investigations will have taken good care of her, without the tiresome and time-consuming rigors of a trial. more inspectors will be fired (if not jailed), and limandri’s temporary position at the building commission will not become permanent.
why do we tolerate this? why, when several hundred well-to-do citizens are afraid of the crane that swings by their windows every day — when they “know” that it means trouble — isn’t anything done about it? are we all afraid of the mafia? or have we all just become so used to everything being completely fucked up and unfixable that we just take it for granted that nothing we do will make a difference?
that is the attitude that allowed george bush to steal an election, that is allowing the department of so-called homeland security to steal our civil rights an inch at a time, that allowed kitty genovese to be murdered on her doorstep,
what can be done about it? get noisy. write a blog. start a picket line. buy a megaphone and stand in the street shouting warnings. organize the people in your building, on your block, at your office.
if you sit on your ass and do nothing, then don’t complain or say you saw it coming. don’t expect the government to protect you, because the government is not interested in protecting you, the government is interested in fundraising and re-election and that is all. TALK to your neighbors, TALK to the hardhat, ASK a question when something doesn’t seem right to you and ask it LOUDLY. and if you don’t get a satisfactory answer, ask again. and again. question authority. question everything.
we have met the enemy, and he is us. but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
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