Let’s remember when a crane collapse killed an area man in Bellevue, on this day in 2006 (November 16)
Crane collapses are no joke, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more in Seattle considering it is impossible to look at the sky in downtown without seeing at least a dozen. 13 years ago today, Bellevue saw one.
Per HistoryLink’s Daryl C. McClary:
On Thursday night, November 16, 2006, a 210-foot tower crane, used in building construction, collapses in downtown Bellevue, damaging three buildings and killing Matthew Ammon in his top-floor apartment. After a six-month investigation, Washington State Department of Labor and Industries will determine that the collapse was due to catastrophic failure of a custom-designed, non-standard base. The tragedy will spur the state legislature to pass a crane-safety law that will be among the nation’s strictest.
The giant construction crane had been set up in September 2006 by Northwest Tower Crane Services, Inc. at the southwest corner of NE 4th Street and 108th Avenue NE in Bellevue, the site of Tower 333, a new 20-story office building. Manufactured in Germany by Liebherr International AG of Bulle, Switzerland, the 210-foot-tall tower crane, operated by Ness Crane Services, sat in an excavation five stories deep. Attached to the top of the vertical mast was the slewing unit, the gear and motor that allow the crane to rotate, and the operator’s cab. The crane’s horizontal jib, or working arm, extending 154 feet forward of the slewing unit, had a maximum lifting capacity of 22 tons. The shorter horizontal machinery arm, extending aft, contained the crane’s motors, electronics, and the large concrete counterweights.
Typically, the entire apparatus is anchored to a huge concrete pad, weighing some 200 tons, with large anchor bolts, ensuring its stability. But the base for the tower crane at Tower 333 was different. Designed by the Seattle engineering firm Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA), at the behest of the project’s general contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, the tower crane was bolted onto a custom-designed cross-frame made of steel I-beams. The empty space beneath the crane was used for parking and storage.
At about 7:45 p.m. on Thursday, November 16, 2007, the tower crane suddenly toppled across 108th Avenue NE, a major downtown Bellevue arterial. The falling mast demolished the entire northeast corner of the Plaza 305 office building. The machinery arm hit the Civica Office Commons, damaging the northeast corner on the fifth and sixth floors, and the adjacent Melting Pot Restaurant. The jib crashed directly onto the top of Pinnacle Bell Center, a five-story, 248-unit condominium building with retail stores on the ground level.
When the Bellevue Fire Department arrived at the scene, they found the crane operator, Warren Taylor Yeakey, age 34, of Tacoma, trapped in the operator’s cab, some 30 feet from the ground. Yeakey was able to extract himself from the cab and was rescued by firefighters with a ladder. He was transported to nearby Overlake Hospital, suffering only minor injuries from the nearly 200-foot fall.
Meanwhile, Bellevue firefighters and police, assisted by King County Search and Rescue personnel and dogs, began searching the debris and damaged buildings for casualties. Miraculously, they found only one. He was identified as Matthew Quay Ammon, age 31, a Microsoft patent attorney who was living in the fifth-floor Pinnacle Bell Centre apartment crushed by the crane’s jib. Tim Waters, Director of Communications for the City of Bellevue remarked: “If this had occurred between eight and five, we could have been looking at a tragedy of much farther-reaching consequences.”
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