Crane Tips Over at CSUF; No One Hurt

FULLERTON —  Two crane operators miraculously escaped injury Monday when their 120-ton machine overturned as they were installing bleacher seating for the new Cal State Fullerton football stadium.

One of the operators, Carl Hamilton, said the ground may have been too soft from recent rains, causing the giant hoisting device to topple from an earthen berm. That sent its 100-foot steel arm crashing into a university parking area, where it narrowly missed student vehicles.

“It was like uprooting a big tree,” said Russ Shrill, a carpenter at the site who watched from nearby as the crane plunged into the parking lot. “I’ve never seen one roll over.”

Project manager Samuel Verna of Irvine-based Taylor Woodrow Construction California Ltd. estimated damage to the crane at nearly $1 million. A small pickup truck parked on the construction site was also damaged.

“We were extremely lucky nobody was hurt,” Verna said, standing near the crane, its wheels in the air and its long mangled arm lying across the parking area. “No one even got a scratch. It’s a scary situation.”

Hamilton, 50, of Hesperia, said work had just begun Monday morning when he and a fellow operator, whom he identified as Jim Thorpe, began lifting a 13,000-pound steel mold used to pour concrete bleachers on the stadium’s west side.

With him operating the crane and Thorpe driving it, Hamilton said, the machine started to lean heavily to one side.

“I was trying to get back control of the load,” Hamilton said, recounting the accident while slumped in the passenger seat of a pickup truck. “But it got to a point where it wasn’t coming back. I jumped out and took off running. I knew exactly it was gone.”

The operator said he got far enough away so as not to “get tangled in the cables” before he turned to look behind him.

“I don’t even remember (the sound),” he said. “That’s when I was running. It ain’t never happened to me before.”

Verna and Hamilton said Thorpe remained in the crane’s cab and “rode it down” before popping the door open and crawling out the top. Both men said Thorpe was uninjured.

As the crane was pulled over, workers scrambled to get clear of it.

“I saw the crane operator jump out, and everybody was yelling,” said Shrill, who was near the machinery just moments before it went down. “It went over kind of slow. I think the ground gave out.”

In addition to the damage to the crane itself and the on-site pickup truck, the crane punched a hole in the street below the stadium, where the arm hit.

Verna said the cause of the accident had not been officially determined Monday morning, adding that it was “too early to tell” whether recent rainstorms had contributed to it.

Inclement weather caused work to be suspended on the $8-million sports complex, which includes football and baseball stadiums, for all but one day last week, Verna said.

Construction began Oct. 17 and is scheduled for completion by mid-January, 1992, according to Glenn Lemon, director of design and construction of university projects at Cal State Fullerton. The accident is not expected to affect that schedule.

Despite the rain, Verna said, there had been no problems in completing 12 previous segments of bleacher construction.

Fullerton Police Sgt. Bob Baker said that since no one was injured, it would be up to the contractors to determine the cause of the accident.

“For their industry,” Baker said, “this is one of their worst nightmares.”

The crane is owned by Owl Crane & Rigging Co. of Fontana. Company officials did not return phone calls Monday.