Syncrude back to work after crane collapse
Syncrude back to work after crane collapse
Posted By Fort McMurray Today
Posted 4 years ago
Several thousand workers returned to regular shifts at Syncrude Canada on Wednesday night and today after an almost two-day work interruption that began Tuesday night.
Six workers were injured by a crane that fell on a trailer Monday night.
?Our night shift was fully operational at 7 p.m. last night. UE-1 shu down work construction and all of our personnel are on scheduled shifts today,? spokeswoman Kara Flynn told Today this morning.
All UE-1 personnel, upgrading, utilities and extraction shutdown crews and office personnel working in or in the vicinity of the Frank Spragins complex were asked to stay at home Wednesday.
The company still hasn?t figured out what exactly happened to the crane, or if snow or wind may have been factors.
?What caused it to come down, we don?t yet know,? said Flynn, adding the crane slowly lowered, which caused it to topple over and hit a building and a trailer in Syncrude?s upgrading plant.
Flynn said there were workers in the building at the time, but added the structure was protected with blast proofing and no one was seriously injured.
Six workers were sent for medical evaluation with minor injuries but were also immediately released.
People were evacuated from the area and operations were temporarily shut down while the crane was stabilized.
One contractor who works at the site, and who asked not to be named, said the falling crane came within a few feet of crushing several pressurized propane tanks, and also narrowly missed pipelines carrying equipment fuel and deadly ammonia gas.
?It?s a miracle nobody got killed,? he said.
Flynn insisted the near-miss reports were unsubstantiated.
?I couldn?t say whether there were propane tanks in the area, but there are fuel lines running through our whole plant,? Flynn said.
The recovery plan is still being carried out. ?The work we did yesterday was to stabilize the crane, as the first part of recovery and now we?re commencing the work that will be required to actually remove the crane from the site,? Flynn said.
A large crane from Edmonton is assisting in the recovery effort.
