Could Any Ones Day Be As Bad As This Guys

[Lily]

I think the van is parked beside the red car blocking the view of it.

The boats look the same to me except the inflatables which are helping in the salvage.

It has obviously spanned a bit of time.

[benbaaa]

I can't be sure, but I think the fifth pcture has been used as the basis for the last one. If you look carefully, in the last picture there are too many blurry bits and all the people are standing in the same positions as they were in the fifth. Well, that's what I think, anyway.

[Dougal]

I thinnk that the people that you can see in the picture were abducted by aliens just after pic 5 was taken, whisked away to a far galaxy at the speed of light where strange psychological probing was carried out on them and then they were brought back to earth, with their memories of the incident inexplicably wiped, and put back on the quay at the instant that the second truck fell off.

Or perhaps it was as I suggested in post #12 that somebody doctored the picture.

[friscofrankie]

IN the late 70s early 80s, was master mechanic of a concrete pump company. We had some impressive equipment; new German Schwing Pumps. Had a job goin' on up in the hills of Orinda, dude was cleaning out his 36m pump, boom folded up no outriggers, he swung it out of the way to clean the hopper.

Fuckin thing tipped over, the boom stuck in the ground preventing it from rolling down the hill.

I was home showered, tokin' my after work smoke. owner of the company a wild-assed Eye-talian, called me yellin and sputterin' I could feel the spittle hitting the phone.

I called up two large winch trucks much like the ones pictured. Was a bit like conducting a small orchestra. We had lower winches on the frame, upper boom winches on the boom, came back upright so sweet. Company owner was the one that told the operator to swing the boom out, so he was easy to deal with. I always liked them "Don't tell my Brother," $500-out-of-his-pocket over time nights...

[The Gentleman Scamp]

The last pic gave me tears and a hernia.

Is there a quick way of pasting all them pics onto an email?

[RDN]

Saw the site this was featured on a while back. Got a link to it somewhere. They picked the shot apart and copped to bein' fake. but the first truck goin' in? Real.
Dumb.

I just Googled ["michael long" truck and crane hire] - the whole story's here: http://www.cargolaw.com/2005nightmare_catch-day.html - probably the site FF saw.

Yes, the last picture's a fake.

Edit:

I just remembered, I DID see a tower crane fall over once. The guy had just finished testing the crane - he had picked up a weight with the hook, and trundled it along to the end of the arm and back again. He then lowered the hook and changed the weight. He then trundled that weight to about half-way along the arm. Everything seemed OK, so he then decided to put the weights back on the lorry that they came from.

So one guy backs up the lorry, the crane driver picks up BOTH weights, and tries to reach the lorry. But the lorry wasn't very close - he had to trundle BOTH weights to the end of the arm to reach the lorry. They didn't make it. Too much weight on the end made the crane tilt and fall over.

I was watching the bottom of the crane at the time - I was on the phone to my g/f and couldn't understand why two of the small metal wheels at the base of the crane were moving upwards from the short length of track that it was sitting on. Then I looked up and saw the guy in the cab getting ready to jump as the whole thing came crashing down. That was in about 1973.

[friscofrankie]

back in the early eighties, we had mobile crane fall over on a Job site trailer. downtown Oakland. Was in a meeting there about some modifications I needed to get my 5" stand-pipe up to the higher floors. Walked out of the trailer to check out the matt pour goin' on, Fuckin Boom fell right across the trailer; pancaked the fucker. No one hurt.
We all ran up to the crane operator to check him out. Now bein' an Operating Engineer myself, I know how fuckin cocky fuckin crane operators can be. This dude? Yellin about improper site prep, fuckin helpers. Fuck 'im. he could walk, fuckin' asshole; he was cocky, wired for sound, party all night fuckin jerk. Went back to the shop, back to welding pipe, owner comes out to the shop, says, "let's go have a drink or two." Sittin at the Bar, we talked abit about the timing, began to sink in we'd both escaped death by about 30 seconds. Had more than a couple. Takes alot of 1800 and Red Hook ESB to cover shakes like that.

[danbo]

It must be very tempting for a crane driver to play God.

[friscofrankie]

They do. They do. I was up on a small boom up on the 30th floor walkin' out to do some work. Fuckin tower crane operator puts the hook a foot in front of my face. Radios down tells me the company wants that work done then the company owners has to do it. Thing is, the owner does the work; I got twice as much work to do fixin his fuck ups.

[RDN]

...We all ran up to the crane operator to check him out. ...

I hung up the phone to my g/f and called for an ambulance. I was shaking quite a bit, thinking there was a mangled body in the wreckage... but all he had was a chipped front tooth! Lucky SOB!

This crane fell away from my building - three sides of a square, with an open space in the middle - and the arm managed to miss a single storey house on the fourth side. The counter-weights also landed in one of the few open spaces with no buildings or cars. Incredibly lucky!

[KevinCorr]

I could see that coming from the first pic...