Contracting Companies Fined for Crane Collapse
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Three contracting companies face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for their role in a fatal crane collapse that killed seven people on East 51st Street last March.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a total of $313,500 in citations yesterday to Rapetti Rigging Services Inc., Reliance Construction Group, and Joy Contractors Inc. for allegedly violating safety standards at the crane site.
Council Member Jessica Lappin, who represents the district in which the accident occurred and who authored a law passed this month that will lead to an increase in safety standards and training requirements at crane sites, said yesterday that the punishments were fair.
“Ultimately there was a failure here to follow basic safety protocol and a heartbreaking tragedy resulted from it,” Ms. Lappin said in an interview. “These are harsh penalties and I think totally appropriate.”
Phone messages to Joy Contractors Inc.. and an e-mail message to Reliance Construction Group were not immediately returned. Rapetti Rigging Services did not provide a contact number in public listings.
