Crane fell over while putting a steel beam on a new bridge

Map plus Paint

Pennsylvania has a multi-billion dollar project to fill a gap in their highway system in the middle of the state. I added a red line to a map image to indicate where that gap is. We will soon see that the Winfield Interchange is of particular interest.

Project-Overview from Maps

North Alignment from Maps

A more detailed map shows the new highway crosses the existing US-15 where Mulls Hollow Road turns towards the river. So the area below is becoming a rats nest of ramps and a big bridge carrying the new highway over the existing US-15.

Satellite

The new bridge is of interest because a crane collapsed while trying to add a steel slider across it.

The Daily Item advertisement in PennLive

PennLive
A steel girder fell onto Route 15 Tuesday night blocking all lanes south of Winfield after a crane moving it into place tipped on its side. The crane that tipped is not visible but it is similar to the one on the left side of the bridge. (John Beauge, for PennLive)
[No one was injured. As with all accident news articles, the cause is unknown and it is under investigation. This happened Aug 15, 2018. So how many months will they report just "under investigation?" I learned about the accident from a posting.]

(new window) A video taken while both cranes were upright.

PennDOT's description of the project

I searched through 100s of news items concerning lane closures for paving, flooding impacts, etc before I finally found:
Update: Route 15 Closed by Crash at CSVT Interchange near Winfield
As expected, it just describes the detour routes.
A later PennLive article does have some information:

Cranes on either side of the bridge were being used to move into place what is called a slider beam, David Wise, construction manager for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said. The girder is used to slide the concrete bridge beams into place, he explained....No workers were under the bridge and traffic on Route 15 was stopped, as happens  whenever a beam is put in place, he said.

That answers my question of why would a steel beam fall when the photos show a concrete girder bridge.

The construction work is interesting in its own right.

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(new window)  You can turn off the audio with no loss of information.


(new window) (source)


(new window)  This has a strong "water flowing" audio track. I added it to my "white noise" video collection.    See also the Harrisburg area.

A photo gallery of the construction  

I shared the gallery link with the comment: "Do I understand correctly, the fixed mast means the three red cranes are 2250s? They are using multiple cranes to avoid erecting falsework." [The comments indicated that I was correct about 2250, but I should have used the term gantry instead of mast."]

Shane Sigrist commented on my share
When we set bridge girders we used 2 cranes, the 350 vpc was to pick the doubles and the 2250 was to pick the single to make to the next piling.

Shawn Watson posted two photos with the comment:

What not to do turn key and try to reach 20 ft passed your load chart it will get you eventually special if you got 60000 pounds on it was me just saying one of the operator I work with Formen was on his phone directing him and went 15 ft pass were he needed to go I told him he shouldn’t have turned the key to begin with rt 15 PA

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Screeshot from a Daily Item video of the accident