seanjohnson•1mo agoOG Member

Had a load slip on a job in Lowell last Tuesday - here's what saved me

I was craning a steel beam into place and my tagline let go, sending it swinging about 3 feet before I caught it with a counter-swing. Have any of you guys practiced emergency recovery moves enough to pull that off clean?

2 comments

2 Comments

noah_webb1mo ago

Got to push back a little on this one man. Catching a swinging load with a counter-swing sounds like you got lucky more than anything else. I've been running cranes for 15 years and the last thing you wanna do is fight the load like that because one mistake and you're looking at a serious accident or a dropped beam. The fact that your tagline let go in the first place says the setup was wrong or the hardware wasn't checked. Practice emergency moves all you want but real recovery comes from having a spotter and backup rigging in place before you lift, not from trying to be a hero mid swing. You should be looking at why it slipped, not how you fixed it in the moment.

andrew8541mo ago

Gotta be careful with that swing timing though.