Quote Originally Posted by pbmax View Post
Yes. High wind blew over a crane that should not have been operating in the conditions of that day.
Three men died, and a statue outside Miller Park commemorates them.

For anyone not interested in machines, physics and the like; don't bother reading the rest of this, because I am going to drone on about the accident a bit. I followed the accident investigation as close as I could. I still read articles about it, when I find a new one. I am fascinated by it.

This wasn't just "a crane", it was the largest mobile crane in the world. As tall as a 50 story building. Using it required building runways for it to travel on, because the counterweight alone, not including the crane itself, was something like 2 million pounds. They were lifting a 500 ton section of the roof, which actually was an "easy" lift for the crane weight-wise, depending on conditions, crane configuration for the lift, etc. The crane collapsed, it wasn't blown over by the wind. Everyone agrees that wind was a factor, but it was very likely not the only reason, as is often the case in catastrophic failures.