Rigger loses his license after ruling calls him responsible for deadly NYC crane collapse

William Rapetti ,  Crane rigger.

By Associated Press

NEW YORK — A rigger who worked on a massive construction crane that collapsed and killed seven people has been stripped of his licenses after an administrative judge said his sloppy work was to blame for the collapse, despite his acquittal on all criminal charges last year, the city Buildings Department said Wednesday.

The license revocation bars William Rapetti from running any cranes or overseeing their assembly in the city, and the judge’s finding that he was responsible for the catastrophe could come into play in the cluster of lawsuits surrounding the collapse.

“We have determined that Mr. Rapetti took shortcuts while erecting the tower crane by using damaged equipment and failing to follow the manufacturer’s specific instructions,” Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri said in a statement Thursday. “Those shortcuts sacrificed the safety of the job site and led to horrific consequences.”

Rapetti lawyer Marianne Bertuna said the rigger was very disappointed in the decision and considering fighting it in court to try to get back to the work he’s done since he was 17.

“We stand by our position that Mr. Rapetti has always been one of the safest riggers in New York City,” she said. “It was more than a livelihood for him.”

The crane toppled onto a residential neighborhood in midtown Manhattan in March 2008, killing six construction workers and a tourist, hurting two dozen others, demolishing a four-story town house and damaging other buildings as pieces of the rig flew as far as a block away. Coupled with a second Manhattan crane collapse that killed two people two months later, the disaster raised questions about crane safety around the country, spurring new inspections and other measures from New York to Chicago to Dallas.

Building officials, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and prosecutors have long attributed the March 2008 collapse to the failure of four heavy-duty nylon straps that Rapetti and his crew were using temporarily to fasten an 11,200-pound steel collar around the crane. The straps are known as slings.

Rapetti used half as many straps as the manufacturer called for, didn’t pad them to keep them from fraying against the crane’s metal edges and used a visibly worn sling that ultimately broke, overloading the remaining straps, the officials said. When the straps gave way, the collar plummeted down the nearly 200-foot-tall crane, destabilizing the rig by snapping metal beams that tethered it to the building under construction, they said.

In both the criminal trial and a seven-day administrative hearing this past December, Rapetti’s lawyers argued that he had followed crane industry norms and that the straps weren’t the reason for the collapse. His attorneys pointed to other factors, including the crane’s design, which didn’t anchor it to the ground in the usual way, and bad welding in the tethering beams.

A state Supreme Court judge cleared Rapetti of manslaughter and other charges last July. His was the only criminal trial stemming from that collapse.