On July 14, 1999, a massive crane named Big Blue collapsed while lifting a section of the retractable roof for the new Miller Park baseball stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The accident killed three iron workers and injured five others.
The crane, which was lifting a section of the stadium roof weighing over 450 tons, collapsed due to several environmental factors, including wind speeds of 20-21 mph with gusts up to 26-27 mph, and the crane sinking about a foot into the soil when it initially lifted the roof section earlier that day.
The incident led to significant financial consequences, including over $500,000 in fines and a lawsuit settlement of over $99 million, and delayed the completion of Miller Park by a year.
The collapse also highlighted critical issues in crane safety and management, leading to important lessons for the construction industry.
Zyklonbeekeeper 4 points 1 day ago
Remember it well...a contributing factor to this failure was the center walking beam jack was not lowered ...Big Blue was owned by Lampson Crane...this particular unit was a design/build by Lampson whose specialty is heavy lift and will build the crane they need for a specific lift...given that this was a "homemade" crane it adds to the complication that it may have been substandard in that safety features were either mistakenly neglected or deliberately and the reason being is that no functions should initiate until all failsafe features are deployed and this is ensured by way of proximity switches that indicate deployment...the walking beam stabilizer lowered into place would have set the proximity switch thus sending the signal to the central processor that everything is in place and functions are actuated, if the stabilizer doesn't go down the proximity switch doesn't get activated and nothing moves but that's not what happened and the operation continued until it didn't and 3 Ironworkers dead.
Our company took over the crane work.