Harculo Crane Accident

I have been meaning to post a blog about this accident for some time now. However, I don't like to just post a video without some type of information to set up what you are about to watch. I have spent numerous hours online trying to find information regarding this accident. Perhaps because it was in the Netherlands, it has made it so hard to find information on this. This is the perfect accident to perform a case study on so I wish more information was readily available. I have seen this video in training within my company on several occasions for all the right reasons. It was a catastrophic failure that could have been avoided.



This accident happened on October 17th of 2003 at the Harculo Power Plant Netherlands. The Harculo Power Plant is a natural gas plant in Zwolle, Netherlands. It has an output of 349MW. It is important to know that the plant was mothballed in 2001 and then brought back into production in 2002. This is a good indicator as to the condition of the cranes during this overhaul that was taking place at the time of the failure.


I have read several different blogs on this accident. Many say that it was a wire rope failure. Some say operator error, or even the crane manufacturer. The more I look at this though the less I think it was a wire rope failure. It looks more like a load brake failure to me. If it was a wire rope I think it would have dropped quicker than it did, and you would have seen the frayed ends on top of the rotor when it fell to the ground. This crane was hoisting and moving a 70 ton gas turbine rotor that was worth 8.5 million dollars. The failure almost killed two workers. They were so close to the drop that it must have been pretty traumatic for them. This is a great video for training purposes to show why you should not be standing under a load during operation.


It you get anything out of this video, I hope you get how important load brake inspections are. Load brakes cannot be inspected during a routine quarterly or annual inspection. This is an inspection in and of itself. Especially on larger cranes like this one it will take a couple guys and will take the entire day to go through the dis assembly and inspection process. Check with your hoist manual to see when the frequency of gear box inspections should take place on your equipment. Now.. check out this video and tell me what you think....

Huge Crane Fall In Portugal

This is what not to do when rigging a load. Especially a big one like this. You can tell it was extremely top heavy. Never rig from the bottom of the load!!!

Gantry Crane Collapse

I found this video a long time ago. I never posted it because like the Harland and Wolff accident I really wanted more information. I researched online and could not fine anything on this following accident. This accident is of a gantry crane falling down in the winter outside and it almost hits a nearby person in a car. I have no idea where it is, nor do I know why it happened. If anyone knows please fill me in and I will add it to my posting. I think these videos of accidents are very valuable in learning what can happen if the operator is not trained or the equipment is not periodically inspected and preventive maintenance is not performed when it needs to be. This guy barely survived with his life. It appears to me the crane fell because of lateral force on the legs of the gantry. Now it is possible that this was caused by a load swing, or a component on the crane giving out. It is hard to tell without some kind of information. The crane does not even come into the screen until it has already fallen. It is very hard to tell what took place. It is however a good video clip of a gantry crane accident so I thought it should definitely be on my blog. If you have any ideas about this as well, please share them with me. I will post any corrections to this video as I find them. I just wanted to get it up online while it was still available.

Harland & Wolff Accident

I wanted to post this accident in the past but I never did because I wanted more information. Did anyone die? How did it happen? It is often hard to find out those answers because private companies do not have to report an accident if no one gets hurt. Unless someone is killed it is easy to keep the information from getting out to the public. This occurred at Harland & Wolff in Belfast on April 4th 2007. No one was killed in this accident. This is the same shipyard where the Titanic was built. There are 5 cranes in the shipyard. They have two Goliath cranes. One nicknamed Goliath and the other Samson. Goliath was built first in 1969, Samson was built in 1974. They span 140 meters (460ft) with a lifting height of 70 meters (230ft). Each has a capacity of 840 metric tons, or 926 short tons. So combined they can pick up 1600 metric tons or 1852 short tons. They are complete monsters. The crane that fell was a Henson 60 metric tons (66 short tons) crane. It stood 25 meters (82ft). The filming was taking from atop of the neighboring Henson crane. It is said that when the crane fell it came only within a few feet of the neighboring crane. I would think that a shipyard as big as this one would have an anti-collision system installed that would prevent such a collision. As the tower crane comes into the path of the gantry crane they should make it so that it automatically stops the gantry from moving in the direction of the tower crane. Since no one was killed then I imagine then that the tower crane was empty. This would mean to me that someone parked the crane in that position. Why would they park it in the path of the crane? There should also be a safety mechanism that does not allow for shutdown of the crane if it is in the path of the Gantry. In this age of technology there is no need to not have it. The price to install one on a crane would be minimal.

Crane Accidents

OSHA 1910.179B(6) states that

only designated personnel shall be permitted to operate a crane covered by this section.

Designated means selected or assigned by the employer or employer’s representative as being qualified to perform specific duties. ASME B30.2-3.1.1 states that

cranes can only be operated by qualified personnel.

The biggest questions I hear from customers is, what is qualified personnel? ASME is very broad with its definition of personnel and makes it hard to decipher the ASME regulation. However if you read further into the ASME codes it gives you its definition of qualified personnel. If you refer back to ASME B30.2-0.2 it states that

a qualified person is a person who, by possession of a recognized degree in an applicable field or a certificate of professional standing, or who by extensive knowledge, training, and experience, has successfully demonstrated the ability to solve or resolve problems relating to the subject matter and work.

So basically this is just telling you that to be a qualified personnel you need to be properly trained and have the experience, and show that you are fully capable of operating a crane. Training is the key to operating the crane properly. Just because somebody has operated a crane for 10 or 15 years it does not make them qualified. They need the knowledge to go with the skill. Even the experienced operator can learn from a training course. Many accidents occur because the crane operator regardless of his experience has little knowledge of the fundamentals of crane operation. I have posted a few crane accidents that look as if the operation of the equipment was improper. This video shows the dangers of picking up a load and using the crane as a securing device. Cranes are designed to pick loads straight up and down only. They not meant to pull sideways. This is what can happen when you side pull a crane or shock load it. Both cases were done here. This next video is of a rubber tired gantry crane that crashed. I am unsure of the cause whether was an operator error or if this was a equipment failure. If anyone knows about any of these accident please let me know and I will update the post.