Crane Operator’s License Is Suspended
City officials on Sunday suspended the license
energy saving lampof a worker who had been operating a 250-foot-high crane before it crashed into a 25-story building in Lower Manhattan, saying he had failed to secure it properly before leaving the site for the day.
The operator, Christopher Cosban, had held a top-level crane operating license since 2002, said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the city Department of Buildings.
Investigators said Mr. Cosban’s lapse — he did not lower the boom as far as it could go — contributed to the accident but might not have been the sole cause. They said that they were looking into whether mechanical failure was a factor and that they might issue further citations.
The crane’s boom slowly listed just after 7 p.m. Saturday, after its crew had left for the day. It landed with a crash against the building, at 80 Maiden Lane, where it had earlier been hoisting air-conditioning equipment to the roof, and stayed there, leaning across a triangular plaza; work continued overnight and into Sunday morning to remove it.
Five nearby buildings were evacuated, and no one was injured. But the accident concerned officials and residents, coming almost exactly two years after the first of a pair of crane accidents that killed nine people in March and May 2008, and four days after the city’s former top crane inspector, James Delayo, admitted taking bribes to falsify crane licensing and inspections. The charges were not linked to the deaths, but the authorities portrayed his case as part of a pattern of corruption and incompetence that compromised safety enforcement.
