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Crane collapse kills one in downtown Bellevue
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Rick Schweinhart/Journal
An officer tapes off a street in
downtown Bellevue, Wa. on Nov. 16, 2006 after a construction crane fell
into several buildings, including the Wells Fargo Bank Building. The
crane operator received only minor injuries.
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By Noel S. Brady
Journal Reporter
One man was killed Thursday night when a
210-foot tower construction crane toppled in downtown Bellevue,
destroying much of the Plaza 305 building and causing extensive damage
to an adjacent building and an apartment building across the street.
The
upper portion of the crane fell across 108th Avenue Northeast at
Northeast Third Street and into a fourth-floor apartment at Pinnacle
Bell Centre. Firefighters found the body of a man beneath the wreckage
in the apartment.
"He was dead when they found him," said Bellevue fire Lt. Bruce Kroon. "It was obviously blunt-force trauma."
The
man's identity was not released Thursday night. Rescuers with the Urban
Search and Rescue Team were using search dogs through the night in an
effort to find any other apartment residents trapped or killed in the
rubble.
Crane operator OK
One other man, the crane operator, suffered minor injuries, said Bellevue police spokesman Greg Grannis.
"The
crane operator was in the basket just below the boom," Kroon said. "He
rode the crane down, and the fire department extricated him."
Firefighters
used a ladder to retrieve the operator from about 20 to 30 feet above
the ground, but he was able to pull himself out of the cage, Kroon said.
The crane operator walked away from the 210-foot fall, and was taken to Overlake Hospital.
Downtown paralyzed
The
crane collapsed shortly before 8 p.m., paralyzing much of downtown with
dozens of emergency vehicles responding from as far away as Woodinville.
The
crane, which had stood in an excavation pit at the site of the future
Tower 333 at 333 108th Ave. N.E., fell eastward and bounced off the
north side of Civica Office Commons before landing on top of the Plaza
305 building, which houses businesses including Pets Choice.
It
destroyed the top two stories of Plaza 305 and left the ground floor
and basement heavily damaged, Kroon said. Civica tenants sustaining
damage included Wells Fargo Bank and Morgan Stanley.
In the
aftermath, the yellow crane laid across 108th Ave. N.E. beneath the
Pinnacle apartments, where residents and employees of its ground-floor
restaurant, The Melting Pot, poured out to view the damage.
Linda Rosario said she was checking her e-mail in the den of her third-floor apartment at Pinnacle when she heard a rumble.
"It was just this rumble that got louder and louder and then this boom," she said. "The glass went all through our apartment."
Rosario
said she believed the man who lived above her wasn't home with the
crane came down. But she was concerned for his two cats.
Rosario
said a portion of the crane sliced through the side of the building. It
demolished the apartment directly above hers and crashed through her
windows of her den, missing her by about 3 or 4 feet.
"Metal
sliced through the whole building," said Rosario's husband, Paul
Leeper, who had gotten home from work minutes before the crane fell.
"Then there was water everywhere. It broke though some water lines."
The couple was told they wouldn't be able to return to their apartment for at least 12 hours.
The
crane was under contract for use at the Tower 333 project, which is
under development by Washington Capital Management of Seattle. The
project was planned to be 400,000 square feet.
LCL was selected
as general contractor with Magnuson Klemencic as structural and civil
engineer and ME Engineers as mechanical engineer.
Bellevue fire
Battalion Chief Mario Trevino said the accident appeared to be the
result of the crane's malfunction. Representatives from the state
Department of Labor & Industries were on their way to begin
investigating.
"Obviously it was a catastrophic failure of the crane," Trevino said.
The Associated Press and KOMO 4 News contributed to this report.
Last modified: November 17. 2006 12:00AM
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