Crane

Drivers on I-95 will do double takes. Pilots heading to the airport may wonder if they're lost. Thousands of people who spent their lives working at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, a virtual city within the city, will see another part of their proud past disappear. Philadelphia is about to lose one of its southernmost landmarks - the giant hammerhead crane that perches on the edge of the Delaware River in the Navy yard. Soon, the 230-foot steel structure that once lifted many-tonned gun turrets onto gray Navy destroyers will be gone - nothing more than a mountain of scrap metal and old memories.

Barges once traveled down the Delaware Canal carrying the coal that fueled an industrial revolution. In the last 16 months the only thing the canal has fueled is a steady stream of paperwork and bureaucratic memos. Before state park rangers could begin dredging the canal this week to remove a 50-year buildup of silt, more than a dozen federal, state and county agencies needed to give their approval. In a tongue-in-cheek ceremony, a group of canal well-wishers and elected officials gathered in Washington Crossing Historic Park on Tuesday to celebrate making it through the bureaucratic maze.

The crash, crush and destruction of construction sounds awesome to 10-year-old Zach Mlynarczyk. His flimsy hard hat off his head for the moment, Zach stood in a darkened trailer Tuesday morning, watching a friend nudge a rubber joystick to lift boxes on a crane simulator. "Cool. Can we let go of them and let them fly?" Zach, who lives in Sewell, asked a nearby engineer. "I want to go into demolition," the boy also announced. That is what organizers of this unusual summer camp at Gloucester County College - geared toward getting young people jazzed about civil engineering, building, carpentry, and other areas of construction - like to hear.

Several hundred people in the city's Mayfair section were rousted from their homes and one man died of a heart attack yesterday after a street gave way beneath a 40-ton crane, which sunk 10 feet and settled atop a gas line, officials said. More than three hours after the crane fell through Magee Avenue at Frankford Avenue, firefighters and construction workers were still circling the red hulk, stopping every now and then to peer into the hole. Harvey's Towing Service arrived at the scene with a couple of trucks, took one look and went back for a 100-ton crane, police said.

Abandoned in a Western Pennsylvania field since the mid-1990s, a pair of towering, rusted cranes bore silent witness to a national tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, as United Flight 93 plunged into the earth just a few hundred yards away. The dragline cranes, relics of the coal strip-mining heyday of Somerset County, were standing by the smoking crater when first responders arrived from nearby Shanksville. They stayed there for years afterward, becoming to regular visitors part of the hallowed landscape.

An early morning collapse of a crane along a Route 42 construction site injured a worker and tied up southbound traffic for hours yesterday, creating a nightmare for commuters heading to Delaware and Atlantic City. The two southbound lanes on Route 42 were open by 2 p.m. yesterday, and New Jersey Department of Transportation officials said there should be no problem with this morning's rush-hour commute. The crane was maneuvering a 33-ton steel beam when it toppled on its back around 2 a.m., near the borders of Bellmawr and Deptford.

One week after the Center City crane crash that killed the operator and injured several pedestrians, notice of the first lawsuit has been filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. A summons announcing intent to sue was filed yesterday on behalf of Dorothy Ramos, 76, against Masonry Preservation Group Inc., of Merchantville, the crane operator, and First Presbyterian Church at 21st and Walnut Streets. A woman who answered the phone said MPG president Brent Schopfel was not available to discuss the suit.

LAUGHLIN, NEV. CRANE FALLS OFF HIGH-RISE, KILLING 3 A crane being used to pluck another crane off the top of a hotel high-rise crashed to the ground yesterday, killing three people in a parking lot. Two people were crushed in their vehicles, while a third person was hit by the crane while walking, authorities said. The 320-foot-long crane was trying to lift a smaller crane off the top of the 28-story Riverside Resort and Casino in the small gaming town about 90 miles south of Las Vegas.

A crane working at 12th and Chestnut Streets fell onto a building yesterday, closing off traffic and forcing the evacuation of surrounding buildings. A larger crane was sent for to upright the fallen one.