You could tell it wasn't going to end well right from the start. The wanker on the forklift "spearing" the valve ends of the oxygen tanks when they fell over was a pretty good indicator!! :)
That was beautiful. I guess they don't hire engineers in Australia for demolition projects. I especially liked the cylinder valve beating forklift operator, he really set the tone for things to come.
Anyone with even a fundamental knowledge of structures and structural stability would know that the beam connecting the two legs was a tension tie holding the two legs in position. As the video clearly shows, when you cut through that tension member the structure loses all stability and collapses. These people have absolutely no business attempting this type of work. This is not an accident, it's idiocy.
they had two 100ton excavators to hold Aframe together with massive steel cables... one of the excavators broke down so they used a 65ton excavator on one of the cables...you saw what happened next ....trust me ..I was there..dickhead engineers .... guy in the boom lift never worked there again.. boomlift was squashed
I'm an Aussie and have spent enough years in steel construction which was not much different from steel demolition in fact. An honest answer here is that most of the workers would have been too pissweak to speak up and to say 'Stop this shit'. And second I'll bet my gonads that the person running this circus would have been a 'Bigmouth' who easily had everyone follow him because the easiest way you do that, is by making anyone who wants to THINK FOR THEMSELVES look like a wimp in the eyes of everyone else. (That's their biggest weakness). So all are too timid and don't want to take the risk at looking like a girl, even if that means saving lives. I've been on jobs where steel and gear is falling from above but if you tie stuff off, the bigmouths and boofheads snigger "Wod are ya"?
+mspenrice Hillbillies the bloody lot of them....... Somebody should be in gaol for these very practices. I'll say my opinion again that my own experiences tell me that its a 'big mouth' at the back pushing ordinary men along. And for far too long they've used the bullying tactic of calling any person who talks safety, a wimp and a 'girl'. Its all push push push until someone gets hurt or killed. From a boy to a grown man, I spent 29yrs and 6 months watching my own Father sitting at home every single day hardly able to move and with permanent brain damage. He was a rigger on steel construction and paid the price for these stupid types of practices. Coming home in one piece at the end of every day is far more important than than any job and you are more important a person than the 'Cowboy' who thinks he can push men into putting their lives on the line..... Fuck that!
+Tom Tee, You might feel a little better to know that it's not just Australia that has problems like this. It may be that its, not that people don't want to think for themselves, it's that they just don't give a fuck. I think they derive a certain pleasure from watching the big mouthed guy in charge screw up. Either way, it's not right. I'm an electrician and when I was on a job with a loud-mouthed, ego driven, my way or the highway type foreman, the job always has bad moral and it causes all sorts of problems, I dreaded even showing up. On a job with a foreman that treats his men with respect, the guys will go above and beyond for him. How these bad foreman stay employed is beyond me, but they do, they are very good at deceiving their higher ups and deflecting the blame. Now, when I run jobs, I remember what it was like on jobs with a bad boss, that barking/belittling people gets you nowhere. I'd be happy if someone pointed out something unsafe, they are only making my life easier only fucked up people would ridicule someone for doing that! If my project manager tries to speed things up without giving me the proper resources/manpower he can screw off! Especially if he tries to get us to work an excessive amount of overtime, yes the money is nice but doing 5-6/10-12 hr days for weeks on end is ridiculous, production, moral, and safe work practices/carelessness go way down. Some people, especially younger guys love it but IMO it's just not worth it. Treat people as you would like to be treated, it's a simple but effective rule to follow.
You're quite right about the long hours....the body may go the 12 hour days for weeks on end...but the mental clarity goes bad after 8-9 hours.....I was working on a Bio-Mass power-plant as mechanic/welder a few years ago.....12 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months (if you were in the middle of a repair at your 12 hours...you stayed until it was done)....some days were from 7AM until waaaay past mid-night....and of course return tomorrow (or later this morning) at 7AM.....later...when I had time to visit my friends....they said...."You looked 1/2 dead when you were working that job".....
i bet the guy in the forklift was still trying to knock off those cylinder valves with his forks after the collapse. this should be a training film or a new 10 stooges movie
No One was killed in this accident. The man doing the welding fell under neath a steel beam that bent and buckled and this saved his life as the buckle was exactly above him protecting him. Very good video - well done. Amazing to see how quickly it came down leaving no time to escape and the danger of that a work place can entrail. I think this is a very dangerous way to take the crane down - you gotto be mad to be doing what they attempted.
This is a direct tension failure of the tension strut in the a-frame (as people have previously commented). I would be surprised that any engineer would have specified attacking the tie member like this. As everyone has already said, it's unfortunately also pretty obvious. They may have been trying to weaken the structure and went too far or possibly miscalculated the load/dynamic effects on the tie member during cutting. Would be interesting to see any reports on this.
Cut away the part holding two wheeled platforms together and you'll get the roll-away, followed by the collapse of the main structure falling down into the splaying gap. Any one of these should have looked at this and thought "Ummm...if that is cut and that bogey runs that way and this one runs this way, then the crane on top...will....be....falling somehwere in between this struc...GUYS! GUYS! STOP!"
+jerry arnold (jdawgsworld) And an expensive one, too. This company screens it out in the interviewing process in order to deliver better value to their customers.
In addition to this incident, were the initiators of the project held to account for employing cowboys who clearly must have had problems on previous contracts?
This is what happens when the cheapest contractor wins the bid. No site discipline, ridiculous plan to cut the structure. Too cheap to hire a crane and do the job safely.....the crane would have been a maximum of $2k for the entire day, so management are telling you this guy's life was worth $2k to them. Speak up, say no and let management eat their profits.
...somewhere there's a video on TH-cam of tear-down of a big hoist/crane like this...Netherlands or somewhere.........start at the top, 2-3 cranes for support.....remove all ...piece by piece.....no accidents....crane was then moved to Korea and re assembled.....
NOT EXACTLY. Soldering is a fabrication or repair method. You heat metal by many different means, apply solder and some sort of flux material. Gas welding is done nearly the same way, usually without a flux. In electric welding, a solid flux is coated to the electrode or gas or powder flux is used. This process along with 'soldering' is used to bond two or more bits of metal together. The demolition of this crane has nothing to do with "soldering" what so ever. In "cutting" up scrap steel, one uses a flammable gas, CNG LNG, LPG, butane, acetylene or another 'cutting' mixture, along with pure oxygen to heat the steel. Once it reaches it's critical melting point, high pressure oxygen stream is introduced through a hole in the center of the burning tip. 'Cutting' steel is a misnomer as you are actually BURNING up the metal in the kerf by nearly instantaneous oxidation. A really good cut gives off little in the way of sparks. I welcome comments from anyone with more "soldering" facts which I may have inadvertently missed. Thank you. Be safe. Doc
timlad5 Seriously? These are completly different processes. Soldering connects two metal parts with different metal that melts at lower temperature than metal being connected that stay solid (imagine trying to "glue" something with water-ice in freezing conditions), welding involves melting connected metal, sometimes even withoud adding any new material to connection (imagine connecting two ice cubes by slightly heating them up and then freezing them again). BTW this is neither welding nor soldering in this video, it's just cutting with some sort of a cutting torch.
I stand corrected. According to informed sources, Mr Greg Rees was not killed in this mishap. He died about a year later, whilst demolishing the last ore bridge (crane) of several which were torn down at the site. There is no known recording of that event. It would seem after experiencing this catastrophic failure, the company DMX Partners, would change their shoddy practices. Sadly for him they did not. Yes, RIP Brother Union Boiler-maker Greg Rees. Thank you also for the note of appreciation from The Rees family. May God grant you comfort.
The guy videoing seems to be on the same page as the demo guys, they think they are going to have to use the excavators to pull the legs apart. Any kid that's played with blocks would know those legs were going to spread when the steel holding them together was cut. I have to believe they did something like chock the wheels to keep the legs from spreading, but they underestimated the forces, by a lot. How could all the guys on that job not know it was going to come down, it's mind boggling. If the guy that owns the demo company has to have a license, it should be taken away, they were in way over their head.
Wow and that major fuck-up was just a side show to what was coming. How does a rack of bottles come to be lying on its side in 1st place? What a bunch of clowns.
ngaire nordli well let me think on that.he was using a cutting torch, maybe the bottles were there for him to stand on?you know for what he couldnt reach with the lift.or they were spent and they didnt want the crane to fall on them.
joseph fulks Kindly educate yourself on just how high a pressure those OXYGEN bottles are filled to and let me know if you would stand on TOP of a crate of 16 of them when operating a cutting torch. :-) Have a wonderful life! PS - That crate probably weighed a good 1500kg.
They expected a leg which is slanted, to not slide sideways when cut??? Clearly, the bottom horizontal part is in tension between the two legs and the top leg attachment wasn't designed to resist the twisting force from the leverage of the long legs.
I'm sorry but are they thick or something. When they demolished the cranes where I live they cut them up from the top and worked down, taking each cut section down safely with another crane.
How did this wind up? There were a lot of workers right there when it fell, did everyone escape? Did the oxygen tanks have anything to do with the demolition? Thanks!
Apparently the fellow doing the torching fell out of the lift and miraculously survived, but there was a fatal accident at this same site later which resulted in the death of a man.
I'm not sure if they guy cutting the cross member jumped out of the basket and got away or got crushed. But seeing him torching trough this part my expectation was that the legs would spread out, and this happened, this breakdown could only been managed in a safe way by using a cutting charge on this cross member, as there is now way to dismantle this crane safe by cutting it with a torch
The minute I started watching this video, I just started thinking what the hell are they doing. It was instantaneously obvious what the outcome would be. Did not one single worker there have the basic mechanical understanding of what would happen once you cut through that crossmember. Surely the "engineers" (ha ha) or whoever must have discussed the best and safest way to do this demo. My brain will forever be boggled at this act.
At first I thought he was just cutting the compression legs and I was thinking they were going to let it settle then back off and pull the legs out. Ok, would have made sense. But apparently the tension (cross) member was precut also. This would make the way it fell entirely predictable. Could they not even afford some chain restraints? Our local water operator had a somewhat smaller rail crane removed. Due to the difficulty, the removal bill was for more than the original construction.
I must remember that if I ever get to have a video camera trained on somethjing like that: It is always more dramatic to hold it in my hand, not two hands, just one -and preferably with my arm outstretched (whilst scratching my backside with the spare.)
The video is about a near miss a year before a fatal accident doing the same job, the demolition of the Newcastle BHP steelworks The man who died is . Mr Gregory Rees 2.26 Mr Gregory Rees was killed on 19 September 2002 when he was crushed during the demolition of No 6 Ore Bridge at the former Newcastle BHP Steelworks site at Port Waratah. Mr Rees was employed by Demtech Pty Ltd.19 2.27 On 29 July 2003, WorkCover sent a report on the death of Mr Rees to the Newcastle Coroner’s Court.
What werethey thinking? That cross member is a main structural component under tension, keeping the trucks together. What do you think would happen? Wow stupid is as stupid does.
many people have been killed with the cut away technique, i was working in a building when I noticed my colleagues had cut through every stanchion more than 75%, they never got me back in that building but ordered me in which i refused.
They cut from the bottom. The parts that he's cutting are on two separate legs with wheels that go on a train track. When he cuts the support off, they slide outward from the weight of the stuff on top, causing everything to fall. You are supposed to do this starting at the top, taking things down safely instead of this stupid shit. I didn't have to be there to understand how the physics work. lol What they did was retarded and someone should have stopped them.
doesnt take an expert to know that they are cutting short cuts and the proper way is to dismantle it the same way it was built . some cheap fuckers just trying to save a buck and demolish it vs dismantling it the same way it was put together
No one died in this incident. However, there was another incident after this one with one fatality and four injuries. Don't know if the bosses went to jail. I do know WorkCover, Australia's equivalent of OSHA, was negligent in approving this worksite's safety. They had serious problems with government bureaucrats not knowing what the hell they should be doing, and resisting all attempts to change.
Makes the fork lift drivers accident look mild in comparison. I can't believe this was in Australia, i've always thought we had some of the best health and safety requirements in the world, obviously i'm wrong. Pity the camera man didn't hold his nerve and film it, i'd like to see how that big cherry picker ended up where it did
Looks like the bureaucrats at WorkCover, the Australian equivalent of OSHA, didn't bother to train or certify their inspectors in certain specialized fields, and resisted all attempts to correct the matter, and threatened the jobs of their employees when they brought up unsafe working conditions. The guy on the picker survived, but later on, there was another demo accident where one person was killed & 4 injured. (Workcover Inspectors "Untrained". Broadcast: 30/04/2004 Reporter: Sarah Schofield)
That's why you put the cameras on tripods and leave them the fk alone. Amature ruined what would have been a fantstic piece of evidence and learning tool.
Can't tell if "doesn't know how gravity works" or sarcasm. Seriously, there's documented evidence of people that would (and have) cut out the supports of the thing that's supporting them. So I'm honestly not sure anymore. Oh, now I've made myself sad. (last line is Futurama reference, possibly slightly butchered).
@harrazed Lol, you mean the guy that comes running out all pissed off sounding? I swear i saw him punch the guy (asking if he was ok) out and heard him yell something.
That would've passed through an engineering report before demolition, they're normally extremely rigorous, all materials would've been removed Asbestos, and anything flammable. Don't know how they got away with that one..
HERE IS THE KICKER. Mr. Rees was a union boilermaker. A few months earlier his parents wrote a letter to "Workcover", the government entity responsible for workplace safety in NSW. They expressed their concern because the of way the ore bridges were being demolished. The demo company had used the same method taking down the previous cranes, it fell in nearly the same manner. 3 men were almost crushed. Viewing the video of that incident prompted their letter.
Well, as I was watching this, I was thinking about the comment I was gonna put in. It was gonna be "Was anyone else expecting death while watching this?"...but....nevermind!
I'd like to know what they thought was going to happen. How can there be 10 or people on that job and not one of them thinks to say this might not be a good idea?
+mspenrice No one died in THIS incident. That guy on the cherry picker landed in a spot that a bent girder protected. However, they had another incident after this one which killed one guy & injured four more.
They should have been put out of business after this incident. they obviously have no regard for safety and whom ever is engineering these projects does not belong in this business.
Cotronixco The welders lift was under it. if he was tied off, as wood be proper procedure in the U.S. he would not have been able to get out. I have no doubt there were injuries and likely at least one casualty. 😢
You could tell it wasn't going to end well right from the start. The wanker on the forklift "spearing" the valve ends of the oxygen tanks when they fell over was a pretty good indicator!! :)
That was beautiful.
I guess they don't hire engineers in Australia for demolition projects.
I especially liked the cylinder valve beating forklift operator, he really set the tone for things to come.
Anyone with even a fundamental knowledge of structures and structural stability would know that the beam connecting the two legs was a tension tie holding the two legs in position. As the video clearly shows, when you cut through that tension member the structure loses all stability and collapses. These people have absolutely no business attempting this type of work. This is not an accident, it's idiocy.
they had two 100ton excavators to hold Aframe together with massive steel cables... one of the excavators broke down so they used a 65ton excavator on one of the cables...you saw what happened next ....trust me ..I was there..dickhead engineers .... guy in the boom lift never worked there again.. boomlift was squashed
You get that on them big jobs, damage is cool and being lucky enough to live through the bullshit is even better. Cool stories to tell later
That's what happens when you hire people who don't have the Koalafications.
+|| Co-Kane || Good pun, hard to bear, tho.
+|| Co-Kane || The guys underneath would have been well and truly kangarooted.
+|| Co-Kane || qualifications...... :)
+fire blade You need to pay more attention to collapsed threads. Don't make others do the heavy lifting so you get a joke.
i did it my friend i suggest the same to you do not dealing with the comments..but with the content of video
if i had a dollar for every pixel in this video, i would have 71 cents
Sir Smokealot "Potato camera" !
Somebody likes being on high horses.
If I had a Dollar for every bit of Common (Cents) Sense displayed by the crew doing the demolition work then I would still be broke! John, Australia.
I’d have .69 cents
I also appreciate all the surplus personel in the danger area for the vital task of wandering and staring at the one guy doing work....
"I'm just going to cut through this beam which forms a triangle with the legs. What could possibly go wrong?"
lmao, the fact that no one objected the idea though!!
Ryan Costa Yeah, always a good idea to have at least one smart person on site to say, "Let's think this through for a second!"
Lmao the guy recording prob knew it was coming too!
This is like skiing down a very steep slope that's covered in deep snow and then acting all surprised when you trigger an avalanche...
How about the clown picking up the torch bottles? This company was just flat out unsafe and it finally caught up to them.
yeah....always lift with a strap or chain...especially something like a rack of high-pressure cylinders....
Especially as the bottle cage HAD straps already round it. God sake you don't poke live bottles with forks. What a bunch of amateurs.
Yeah, that was literally painful to watch.
Wondered how many valves he could've knocked off, yeah.
and the Darwin award for 2008 goes to clowns with gas axe knocking down crane supervised by experts in Clown suits.
I'm an Aussie and have spent enough years in steel construction which was not much different from steel demolition in fact. An honest answer here is that most of the workers would have been too pissweak to speak up and to say 'Stop this shit'. And second I'll bet my gonads that the person running this circus would have been a 'Bigmouth' who easily had everyone follow him because the easiest way you do that, is by making anyone who wants to THINK FOR THEMSELVES look like a wimp in the eyes of everyone else. (That's their biggest weakness). So all are too timid and don't want to take the risk at looking like a girl, even if that means saving lives. I've been on jobs where steel and gear is falling from above but if you tie stuff off, the bigmouths and boofheads snigger "Wod are ya"?
+mspenrice Hillbillies the bloody lot of them....... Somebody should be in gaol for these very practices. I'll say my opinion again that my own experiences tell me that its a 'big mouth' at the back pushing ordinary men along. And for far too long they've used the bullying tactic of calling any person who talks safety, a wimp and a 'girl'. Its all push push push until someone gets hurt or killed. From a boy to a grown man, I spent 29yrs and 6 months watching my own Father sitting at home every single day hardly able to move and with permanent brain damage. He was a rigger on steel construction and paid the price for these stupid types of practices. Coming home in one piece at the end of every day is far more important than than any job and you are more important a person than the 'Cowboy' who thinks he can push men into putting their lives on the line..... Fuck that!
With any luck, someone actually is.
+Tom Tee,
You might feel a little better to know that it's not just Australia that has problems like this. It may be that its, not that people don't want to think for themselves, it's that they just don't give a fuck. I think they derive a certain pleasure from watching the big mouthed guy in charge screw up. Either way, it's not right.
I'm an electrician and when I was on a job with a loud-mouthed, ego driven, my way or the highway type foreman, the job always has bad moral and it causes all sorts of problems, I dreaded even showing up. On a job with a foreman that treats his men with respect, the guys will go above and beyond for him. How these bad foreman stay employed is beyond me, but they do, they are very good at deceiving their higher ups and deflecting the blame.
Now, when I run jobs, I remember what it was like on jobs with a bad boss, that barking/belittling people gets you nowhere. I'd be happy if someone pointed out something unsafe, they are only making my life easier only fucked up people would ridicule someone for doing that! If my project manager tries to speed things up without giving me the proper resources/manpower he can screw off! Especially if he tries to get us to work an excessive amount of overtime, yes the money is nice but doing 5-6/10-12 hr days for weeks on end is ridiculous, production, moral, and safe work practices/carelessness go way down. Some people, especially younger guys love it but IMO it's just not worth it. Treat people as you would like to be treated, it's a simple but effective rule to follow.
+Chris Barth You are absolutely correct on every single count. On every thing you have said. Very well written.
You're quite right about the long hours....the body may go the 12 hour days for weeks on end...but the mental clarity goes bad after 8-9 hours.....I was working on a Bio-Mass power-plant as mechanic/welder a few years ago.....12 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months (if you were in the middle of a repair at your 12 hours...you stayed until it was done)....some days were from 7AM until waaaay past mid-night....and of course return tomorrow (or later this morning) at 7AM.....later...when I had time to visit my friends....they said...."You looked 1/2 dead when you were working that job".....
omg it was so obvious what was going to happen. These clowns would cut a branch off a tree while sitting on it
flemwad Pretty sure somebody did that once. I think they found the body three blocks away.....
flemwad Found it, happened here in the UK. We win darwin awards too....
darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1994-21.html
darwin better be on North sentinel island cause he deserves to live there
When demolishing something monumental, always start at the bottom.
Let me just stand under this crane while i cut it's support beam...
"it's not like gravity has any effect on behemoth steel cranes anyways"
He had his helmet on. What more do you want?
And he found just the perfect spot to speed up the job by days. I guess he (or rather his heirs) got a nice bonus.
I don't think they watched enough TH-cam.
i bet the guy in the forklift was still trying to knock off those cylinder valves with his forks after the collapse. this should be a training film or a new 10 stooges movie
mike daytona the three stooges actually would have started cutting at the top.
Camera operator had one job.
I agree, sack the camerdude ffs!
1500 feet away and he ducks and hides.... tisk.... tisk....tisk
Good point, why even by a camera if you are going to videotape the ground when action happens.
Ever been filming in that situation?
Bloody hell right, mate! Bloody hell right!
No One was killed in this accident. The man doing the welding fell under neath a steel beam that bent and buckled and this saved his life as the buckle was exactly above him protecting him. Very good video - well done. Amazing to see how quickly it came down leaving no time to escape and the danger of that a work place can entrail. I think this is a very dangerous way to take the crane down - you gotto be mad to be doing what they attempted.
This is a direct tension failure of the tension strut in the a-frame (as people have previously commented).
I would be surprised that any engineer would have specified attacking the tie member like this. As everyone has already said, it's unfortunately also pretty obvious.
They may have been trying to weaken the structure and went too far or possibly miscalculated the load/dynamic effects on the tie member during cutting.
Would be interesting to see any reports on this.
Cut away the part holding two wheeled platforms together and you'll get the roll-away, followed by the collapse of the main structure falling down into the splaying gap.
Any one of these should have looked at this and thought "Ummm...if that is cut and that bogey runs that way and this one runs this way, then the crane on top...will....be....falling somehwere in between this struc...GUYS! GUYS! STOP!"
Pretty obvious that the crew was incompetent from the way the forklift handled the gas canisters.
ummm...common sense is a awesome skill
+jerry arnold (jdawgsworld) And an expensive one, too. This company screens it out in the interviewing process in order to deliver better value to their customers.
....Seems pretty obvious......
The key word in your assessment is "thought" since it seems obvious that nobody on that work site did that.
If brains were dynamite, these clods wouldn't have enough to blow the wax out of their ears!
lol, must remember that one!
Another one for you Richard, Would not have enough to blow their Nose!
John, Australia.
Sad part is in this case it is true.
In addition to this incident, were the initiators of the project held to account for employing cowboys who clearly must have had problems on previous contracts?
*That moment when you realize it's everyone's first day on the job and that the company was only founded yesterday.* 🤣
This is what happens when the cheapest contractor wins the bid. No site discipline, ridiculous plan to cut the structure.
Too cheap to hire a crane and do the job safely.....the crane would have been a maximum of $2k for the entire day, so management are telling you this guy's life was worth $2k to them.
Speak up, say no and let management eat their profits.
+Sideslip Yea they don't even have 3' demo torches so he can stay away from the hot work.
+Sideslip you have nailed it , well said
well said
...somewhere there's a video on TH-cam of tear-down of a big hoist/crane like this...Netherlands or somewhere.........start at the top, 2-3 cranes for support.....remove all ...piece by piece.....no accidents....crane was then moved to Korea and re assembled.....
You can't rent a crane big enough to do the job for $2K a day.
From the beginning of the soldering I kept thinking "do you really want to weaken a structure like that".
"SOLDERING?" Are you daft?
Edward Jonez lol. You can't know what you don't know. lol
Edward Jonez Some countries its called soldering and others its called welding. Yes I know they are cutting but it uses the same principle.
NOT EXACTLY. Soldering is a fabrication or repair method. You heat metal by many different means, apply solder and some sort of flux material. Gas welding is done nearly the same way, usually without a flux. In electric welding, a solid flux is coated to the electrode or gas or powder flux is used. This process along with 'soldering' is used to bond two or more bits of metal together.
The demolition of this crane has nothing to do with "soldering" what so ever. In "cutting" up scrap steel, one uses a flammable gas, CNG LNG, LPG, butane, acetylene or another 'cutting' mixture, along with pure oxygen to heat the steel. Once it reaches it's critical melting point, high pressure oxygen stream is introduced through a hole in the center of the burning tip. 'Cutting' steel is a misnomer as you are actually BURNING up the metal in the kerf by nearly instantaneous oxidation. A really good cut gives off little in the way of sparks. I welcome comments from anyone with more "soldering" facts which I may have inadvertently missed. Thank you. Be safe. Doc
timlad5 Seriously? These are completly different processes. Soldering connects two metal parts with different metal that melts at lower temperature than metal being connected that stay solid (imagine trying to "glue" something with water-ice in freezing conditions), welding involves melting connected metal, sometimes even withoud adding any new material to connection (imagine connecting two ice cubes by slightly heating them up and then freezing them again).
BTW this is neither welding nor soldering in this video, it's just cutting with some sort of a cutting torch.
Thanks for a great video! I was scared almost the whole time after seeing the fork lift with the compressed cylinders!
That's where all the trouble starts ..... Down under :D
Like sitting on a branch, and cutting off the tree.
I stand corrected. According to informed sources, Mr Greg Rees was not killed in this mishap.
He died about a year later, whilst demolishing the last ore bridge (crane) of several which were torn down at the site. There is no known recording of that event. It would seem after experiencing this catastrophic failure, the company DMX Partners, would change their shoddy practices. Sadly for him they did not. Yes, RIP Brother Union Boiler-maker Greg Rees. Thank you also for the note of appreciation from The Rees family. May God grant you comfort.
Supervisor comes along: "Have you done your Take 5"?
what happened to the man on the fork truck did he manage to lift the gas bottles .
The guy videoing seems to be on the same page as the demo guys, they think they are going to have to use the excavators to pull the legs apart.
Any kid that's played with blocks would know those legs were going to spread when the steel holding them together was cut.
I have to believe they did something like chock the wheels to keep the legs from spreading, but they underestimated the forces, by a lot.
How could all the guys on that job not know it was going to come down, it's mind boggling.
If the guy that owns the demo company has to have a license, it should be taken away, they were in way over their head.
Worst company in the world!
Why would you attempt to pick up a stillage of oxygen bottles with forks in the valves?
Wow and that major fuck-up was just a side show to what was coming. How does a rack of bottles come to be lying on its side in 1st place? What a bunch of clowns.
ngaire nordli well let me think on that.he was using a cutting torch, maybe the bottles were there for him to stand on?you know for what he couldnt reach with the lift.or they were spent and they didnt want the crane to fall on them.
joseph fulks
Kindly educate yourself on just how high a pressure those OXYGEN bottles are filled to and let me know if you would stand on TOP of a crate of 16 of them when operating a cutting torch. :-) Have a wonderful life!
PS - That crate probably weighed a good 1500kg.
insane contractor . How many died there?
They expected a leg which is slanted, to not slide sideways when cut??? Clearly, the bottom horizontal part is in tension between the two legs and the top leg attachment wasn't designed to resist the twisting force from the leverage of the long legs.
I'm sorry but are they thick or something. When they demolished the cranes where I live they cut them up from the top and worked down, taking each cut section down safely with another crane.
MrBooojangles Why are you sorry?
What's the fun in that?
Love how the dude cutting it stops and turns round to his mate just before it goes. Can almost hear him asking, "Are we sure this is gonna be OK?"
Cherry picker for sale, used once. Bargain price for fast sale.
Minor dings & dents.
+Green Silver Some red stains. Will wash off.
In multiple warped pieces for transport eh... Ü
meanwhile at 4:56 dudes still trying to pickup the tanks with his forklift...
What did they think would happen?
This hack outfit obviously had no idea what they were doing.
How did this wind up? There were a lot of workers right there when it fell, did everyone escape?
Did the oxygen tanks have anything to do with the demolition?
Thanks!
Little did Sir Isaac Newton realise how much trouble he was unleashing when he invented Gravity.
Apparently the fellow doing the torching fell out of the lift and miraculously survived, but there was a fatal accident at this same site later which resulted in the death of a man.
I'm not sure if they guy cutting the cross member jumped out of the basket and got away or got crushed.
But seeing him torching trough this part my expectation was that the legs would spread out, and this happened, this breakdown could only been managed in a safe way by using a cutting charge on this cross member, as there is now way to dismantle this crane safe by cutting it with a torch
I moved on, without watching at first. (too apparent) Returned only to read comments. Thank you for being interesting. HAGD
The minute I started watching this video, I just started thinking what the hell are they doing. It was instantaneously obvious what the outcome would be. Did not one single worker there have the basic mechanical understanding of what would happen once you cut through that crossmember. Surely the "engineers" (ha ha) or whoever must have discussed the best and safest way to do this demo. My brain will forever be boggled at this act.
1:03 wonder why, the forks could have been closer together?
That guy is an accident waiting to happen!
3:55 VERY NICE!
"Well, it's demolished ain't it? What more d'ya want mate?"
I'm thinking they didn't do a JSA before embarking on that little project...
At first I thought he was just cutting the compression legs and I was thinking they were going to let it settle then back off and pull the legs out. Ok, would have made sense. But apparently the tension (cross) member was precut also. This would make the way it fell entirely predictable. Could they not even afford some chain restraints?
Our local water operator had a somewhat smaller rail crane removed. Due to the difficulty, the removal bill was for more than the original construction.
how many dead ?
WHat happened to the guy with the torch? I don't see how he could have gotten out of there in time, but I've seen strange shit on construction sites.
+Steve Sanders The guy operating the torch from the lift was killed.
He lucked out by falling to a spot that a bent girder protected.
And there I thought the fork truck driver was going to get everyone killed handling those acetylene bottles like he was piling up scrap metal .
The Boss "Say mates lets have a spot of tea before get started on this easy job".
That looked like a very efficient way to demolish a crane. :-)
I must remember that if I ever get to have a video camera trained on somethjing like that:
It is always more dramatic to hold it in my hand, not two hands, just one -and preferably with my arm outstretched (whilst scratching my backside with the spare.)
the dude jumped out of the lift before he was crushed? I didn't see him laying anywhere, so I assume he was all right
The video is about a near miss a year before a fatal accident doing the same job, the demolition of the Newcastle BHP steelworks
The man who died is .
Mr Gregory Rees
2.26 Mr Gregory Rees was killed on 19 September 2002 when he was crushed during the
demolition of No 6 Ore Bridge at the former Newcastle BHP Steelworks site at Port Waratah.
Mr Rees was employed by Demtech Pty Ltd.19
2.27 On 29 July 2003, WorkCover sent a report on the death of Mr Rees to the Newcastle
Coroner’s Court.
The way that forklift dragged over all the valves for those tanks.....Holy fuck thats dangerous.
How many were injured/dead?
who packed these guys lunches and dressed them
What werethey thinking? That cross member is a main structural component under tension, keeping the trucks together. What do you think would happen?
Wow stupid is as stupid does.
Question is did anyone get killed or seriously injured?
Who's the bigger uuck fp? the guy on the fork lift or the cutter.
many people have been killed with the cut away technique, i was working in a building when I noticed my colleagues had cut through every stanchion more than 75%, they never got me back in that building but ordered me in which i refused.
does anyone know where and when this happened, would be a good case study for wh&s training ?
so how many actually got smushed??
I'm sure of one thing, since I wasn't there I'm not going to give my expert opinion about how they did it wrong.
They cut from the bottom. The parts that he's cutting are on two separate legs with wheels that go on a train track. When he cuts the support off, they slide outward from the weight of the stuff on top, causing everything to fall. You are supposed to do this starting at the top, taking things down safely instead of this stupid shit. I didn't have to be there to understand how the physics work. lol What they did was retarded and someone should have stopped them.
doesnt take an expert to know that they are cutting short cuts and the proper way is to dismantle it the same way it was built . some cheap fuckers just trying to save a buck and demolish it vs dismantling it the same way it was put together
Should you not start at the top?
what did they think would happen if u cut through the suporting legs, ide say the cutter was killed from the looks of it
what was the body count and did both bosses go to jail
No one died in this incident. However, there was another incident after this one with one fatality and four injuries. Don't know if the bosses went to jail. I do know WorkCover, Australia's equivalent of OSHA, was negligent in approving this worksite's safety. They had serious problems with government bureaucrats not knowing what the hell they should be doing, and resisting all attempts to change.
Makes the fork lift drivers accident look mild in comparison. I can't believe this was in Australia, i've always thought we had some of the best health and safety requirements in the world, obviously i'm wrong. Pity the camera man didn't hold his nerve and film it, i'd like to see how that big cherry picker ended up where it did
+Antipodean33 No Kidding all that build up, to the worst filming ever!
Looks like the bureaucrats at WorkCover, the Australian equivalent of OSHA, didn't bother to train or certify their inspectors in certain specialized fields, and resisted all attempts to correct the matter, and threatened the jobs of their employees when they brought up unsafe working conditions.
The guy on the picker survived, but later on, there was another demo accident where one person was killed & 4 injured.
(Workcover Inspectors "Untrained". Broadcast: 30/04/2004 Reporter: Sarah Schofield)
That's why you put the cameras on tripods and leave them the fk alone. Amature ruined what would have been a fantstic piece of evidence and learning tool.
Its all about profit and meeting deadlines. The reality of construction/demolition in Australia is far from what the public realise.
The guy whom made the video didn't have the balls to give it to Workcover until many months later. This is how much some people value human life !!
Where abouts in aus was this?
Newcastle BHP Steelworks in New South Wales, circa 2001.
The amount of energy that guy just set off was crazy.
Did the camera man get hit? Why did he swing off the subject? We didn't see what happened!
Nah he just shit himself
I was surprised when they were cutting apart the crane supports and it came down.
Can't tell if "doesn't know how gravity works" or sarcasm.
Seriously, there's documented evidence of people that would (and have) cut out the supports of the thing that's supporting them.
So I'm honestly not sure anymore.
Oh, now I've made myself sad.
(last line is Futurama reference, possibly slightly butchered).
@harrazed Lol, you mean the guy that comes running out all pissed off sounding? I swear i saw him punch the guy (asking if he was ok) out and heard him yell something.
That would've passed through an engineering report before demolition, they're normally extremely rigorous, all materials would've been removed Asbestos, and anything flammable. Don't know how they got away with that one..
bizarre ... what were they thinking?
wearing a hard hat wont save you from that mess
Was he wearing totectors?
Its TOTALLY AMAZING how steel workers do this, cut this part, OBVIOUSLY will cause the opening of the two colums and collapsing the crane OVER YOU
HERE IS THE KICKER. Mr. Rees was a union boilermaker. A few months earlier his parents wrote a letter to "Workcover", the government entity responsible for workplace safety in NSW. They expressed their concern because the of way the ore bridges were being demolished. The demo company had used the same method taking down the previous cranes, it fell in nearly the same manner. 3 men were almost crushed. Viewing the video of that incident prompted their letter.
Well, as I was watching this, I was thinking about the comment I was gonna put in. It was gonna be "Was anyone else expecting death while watching this?"...but....nevermind!
Man! I can't believe that. And that folklift guy too! Gosh. I'm glad I don't have to work with that mob. And how calm was that camera operator!!
how come the cam guy jumped from a half mile away?
Why did all that steel fall?
lol what did they use!"the do not dissasemble directions in the booklet" :P
They seem completely oblivious to the danger.
Perfect. Whats wrong with that? (Greg, Construction Company CEO, Australia.)
Entire crew was probably on 457 visas!
+DrFelonious Or even worse, sourced through a labour hire company, where all the workers lie and fabricate qualifications.....
I'd like to know what they thought was going to happen.
How can there be 10 or people on that job and not one of them thinks to say this might not be a good idea?
Hopefully the contractor in charge of this disaster is in jail and can put no other worker in danger of his life.
+gregg4164 ... and the families of those guys who were underneath got the remaining value of the company evenly divided between them.
+mspenrice No one died in THIS incident. That guy on the cherry picker landed in a spot that a bent girder protected. However, they had another incident after this one which killed one guy & injured four more.
They should have been put out of business after this incident. they obviously have no regard for safety and whom ever is engineering these projects does not belong in this business.
At least nobody ended up down under it.
Holly shit I about laughed to death that was a good one
Cotronixco The welders lift was under it. if he was tied off, as wood be proper procedure in the U.S. he would not have been able to get out. I have no doubt there were injuries and likely at least one casualty. 😢
How fast did that guy jump out of the boom truck! lol priceless.
You build from the bottom up and disassemble from the top down. I'm surprised that
nobody die that day.
...Right, that's the usual way......
It's huge, it's heavy. it's above our heads... now how can we bring it down?
Darwin's and Newton's laws hard at work.
Who the heck engineered this job, anybody knows you start at the top
You're a man who knows.....let's start a demo business...... We can't do worse !!!!! Lol..
How do you feel bad for people with neglect to safety like that . its unreal
any casualty ?