I thought a quick pint of Irish cider and some corned beef hash would be a lovely way to wile away the St. Patrick’s celebrations on a very warm 55′F Saturday afternoon at Jameson’s Bar, when a series of “BOOMS!” roared through the air. It originally sounded like when heavy trucks go over potholes and make that banging sound, but much, much louder. Seconds later one of the bar’s punters who had been enjoying a smoke outside came running back in shouting, “you guys better come see this!”. The entire bar scurried outside to see absolute chaos. A large plume of yellow/brown smoke was rushing towards me from just south of 52st street, and then someone pointed skyward across the street - what was later understood as half of a couple hundred foot high crane smashed into the side of a large residential apartment building. Chaos ensued. I went back into the bar and picked up my camera, took some video and some stills.

Emergency services were on the scene in seconds and soon sprang into action, cordoning off the surrounding areas. People were gathering in droves - within 20 minutes 2nd avenue was packed to the hilt with people filming, shaking their heads, wiping their eyes (we all knew someone must have been hurt. The crane was massive - utterly huge.

S and I walked around the block via 1st avenue, and were able to see the extent of the damage from the other side of 51st street - devastating. An entire apartment building behind the one the crane was leaning on was completely crushed. A mini was partly mangled and flipped onto its side and flung into the middle of the street. Firemen everywhere. Literally everywhere.

Listening and talking with various other people on the streets it became apparent what had happened. The massive crane had been tethered against a construction site (new apartment building being erected) and had come loose when contractors had been working on it. It then pivoted on it’s base, and the entire thing leaned away from the site towards the apartment building south of it on the corner of 51st street and 2nd avenue, and hit the top of the building about half way down the crane’s body - hitting it so hard that the entire top half snapped off, traveled over the apartment building onto a smaller townhouse sized building behind, flattening it. This is what created the massive plume of smoke. It turned out that the dive bar Fubar was part of that smaller building, and it too was simply obliterated. Thankfully the bar was closed for business, but the bar’s owner said that he thinks their may have been en employee on the premises at the time cleaning the bar ready for business.

The death toll at this point has reached four - I believe those four confirmed deaths were the four construction workers who were situated on the crane during the time of its collapse.

I was pretty shaken up, and I am still shocked how close I was to the collapse - half a block.