State blames deadly tower-crane collapse on 3 companies

State officials are blaming the deadly collapse of a tower crane in Seattle last spring on three construction companies' failure to follow safety rules.

Those companies — Morrow Equipment of Salem, Oregon, GLY Construction of Bellevue and Northwest Tower Crane Service of Des Moines, Washington — have been fined a total of $107,400.

TRANSCRIPT:

Brian Heath holds up a hefty cylinder of steel. It’s more than a foot long, about 25-pounds.

Heath: “It’s got a bolt at one end, right? So when they tighten this bolt down, that really locks everything in tight.”

Giant pins like the one in Heath's hands are what hold construction cranes together. They have to be removed carefully to take the towering cranes down at the end of a job.

Heath is a former crane operator. Now he’s a crane investigator with the Department of Labor and Industries.

Heath: “The root cause for this particular accident was rather obvious to us.”

He says when a gust of wind hit the tower crane in South Lake Union, construction crews had prematurely removed 50 of those giant pins.

Heath: “Nearly all of them that were in the tower structure.”

The tower crane fell from the sky. Four people died.

The companies have two weeks to appeal their fines.

Since the collapse, state officials have been inspecting most construction cranes to make sure they’re being assembled and taken down safely.

The state’s also considering new rules for tower-crane safety.