The Brian Lehrer Show

The crane falling is due to overwhelmed inspectors.

On every street corner there's a 80 story building going up.

How can any of this construction be safe.

The mayor has been going out of his way to encourge all the construction.

This is unsafe!

while the government spends money on war and WATCHING you, the whole country is falling apart.

why doesn't our nation want to invest in infrastructure.

the building dept has been asleep at the wheel for years

I question the assertion that there's never been a crane collapse in NYC before. Back around 1987, a crane collapsed on W 107th St near Amsterdam. I remember because my daughter was going to school at Columbus and 107. Thank goodness it was too early in the morning for there to be any people hit; I believe it just took out some cars. Another hour, and that block would have been full of school children.

Bloombergs nonchalant response to violations is just another example of bloombergian-ubercapitalist mentality: $$ trumps everything, even life, and is always seen as a solution...the families of people injured or killed are shut-up with money...this is very sad.

I'm getting tired of the Mayor defending the companies that are involved in these disasters such as this one and the explosion on Lexington Ave a few months ago where he defended Con Ed and also defended them during that blackout in Queens a while back. I listen to Con Ed stockholders brag about the wonderful stocks that continue to do so well while ConEd bitches they need more money to upgrade their system, something they've been saying since their first serious blackout in 1966. Well they've been getting the increases, the system isn't getting updated, the blackouts still happen, they are not held responsible enough and their stockholders continue to brag about the money they make! Screw us!!!

re: {2}: government agents read that. :-)

Infrastructure in not glamourous and doesn't get the headlines and photo ops, so the pols don't really want to devote much attention to it. That's really unfortunate, as infrastructure is crucial.

Thanks for raising that point.

Your guest said a construction crane has not fallen in NYC before. I don't believe that is so.

A crane fell at 6th Ave and 24th street (where all those residential hi-rises are going up -- across the street from Ms. Dupre's residence), killing at least one person, between 1998-2000.

Very surpising that no one seems to remember the crash of the crane working on the Conde Nast building. If memory serves, it fell on an SRO. The 43rd Street block was closed so long business went under.

I live on Washington Street just below Canal St. in Tribeca. On the block south of my building is a 200-foot crane at the construction site of a 16-storey building belonging to the Parker Co. About a month ago this crane collapsed on a Friday afternoon and all the surrounding buildings had to be evacuated. The next day when workers were dismantling the remaining parts of the crane, several large pieces of steel fell down and injured two workmen. Although this accident was reported locally at the time, current reports of Saturday's horrific accident (in both the Daily News and the New York Times) have not mentioned (or are ignorant of) the fact that there have been other recent crane accidents in NYC. The gentleman on Brian's show this morning made the same error. We all feel like sitting ducks.