by Nick Drew | Mon 19 Oct 2020
Excavator Shaft Fall, the Aftermath
This incident took place last week in Hong Kong, at a place called Ho Man Tin which is along the path of a new road project called the Central Kowloon Route. The construction includes a section of tunnel some 3.9km’s in length. As I understand it the excavator was being lowered into the shaft to load out material from the tunnelling process, but obviously the lift went disastrously wrong and the machine plummeted to the bottom of the shaft.
The video has since gone viral, but just in case you haven’t seen it, here it is once more!
Clearly there had been faults in the way the Doosan excavator was slung, with too much weight to the front end of the machine causing it to flip forward and eventually upside down before the lifting gear gave way.
Early reports indicated that a banksman was operating the crane in the absence of the site supervisor, its unclear why the crane operator himself was not operating the crane. Fortunately, and somewhat incredibly, nobody was injured in the incident, but unsurprisingly the machine is looking in a sorry state at the bottom of the shaft as we see below, in a series of photos that are now emerging online.
A very costly mistake and just a miracle that nobody was killed, an enquiry has been launched to examine the failings of the operation. As for the excavator, its a one way trip to the breakers yard for sure!