The day the wind almost took my load downtown

Last Tuesday I was working a job on a tight site in downtown Denver, setting HVAC units on a 12 story roof. The wind was supposed to be light that morning, but around 10 AM it picked up bad, like 30 mph gusts. I had this big 8,000 pound unit swinging on the hook, and I felt it start to drift sideways toward a glass curtain wall. My spotter was yelling over the radio to set it down, but there was no room near the crane. I had to ride the swing and crab the whole rig back to center, then wait 45 minutes for the gusts to die down. My heart was pounding the whole time, and my oiler was white as a sheet. After we finally set the load, I decided to call it a day and pack up. Has anyone else had to stop a job mid lift because of sudden weather changes?

2 comments

2 Comments

hunt.nora14d ago

That bit about "riding the swing" gave me chills just reading it. I've had a similar thing happen on a site near the airport where wind shear came out of nowhere, and the load started doing this slow motion pendulum move toward a parking garage. My spotter's voice went up an octave, and I had to feather the brake real gentle to keep it from slamming into the concrete. We circled for what felt like forever, maybe 20 minutes, until it calmed down, but my hands were shaking so bad after I had to take a break. You made the right call packing up, because that glass wall would have been a million dollar mistake if a gust shoved it over.

grantf7314d ago

Haha yeah that "slow motion pendulum" is the stuff of nightmares. My spotter sounded like a kid who just dropped his ice cream cone, and I was white-knuckling the controls thinking "well, this is it, my career ends on a Tuesday afternoon." At least you could laugh about it later, right? I couldn't pick up a coffee cup for an hour after, hands were shaking so bad I looked like I had Parkinson's. Better to pack up and live to crane another day than explain to the insurance adjuster why the glass wall is now a glass confetti situation.