A huge crane that crashed down on a busy street in Vancouver’s West Side will likely be removed in two days, after blocking the route for more than two weeks.
Saul Schwebs, chief building official for the City of Vancouver, says crews are “demolishing the crane, not salvaging it,” at the site where it came down on West 41st Avenue near Collingwood Street, in the Dunbar neighbourhood.
He said British Columbia’s worker safety agency, WorkSafeBC, gave the green light for the operation on Tuesday, and debris should be cleared from the site by Thursday, although further cleanup might be required.
Schwebs says the aim is to restore bus services on the stretch of West 41st Avenue by Labour Day. The crane collapsed on Aug. 6 in a fire that destroyed a six-storey apartment building under construction.
A towering construction crane came crashing down into a Vancouver house as fire and explosions engulfed a construction site on the city’s West Side.
Trevor Connelly, deputy chief of operations for Vancouver Fire Rescue Services told a news briefing that the apartment fire that triggered the collapse and damaged nearby homes was accidental, although the exact cause remains unknown.
Miranda Myles with Vancouver’s emergency management agency says the city is still supporting 15 people displaced by the incident.
Schwebs says the crane removal operation had been delayed by the need to preserve evidence for the investigation into what went wrong.
“We really want to learn some lessons from this,” he said.