A Halifax resident captured the moment a crane came toppling down onto an unfinished building shortly before Dorian made landfall.
Fatema Ali was in her apartment Saturday watching the storm out the window when she saw the crane begin to sway. She pulled out her phone and managed to capture the exact moment of the collapse.
In the footage, a yellow, T-shaped crane plunges down towards a much shorter high-rise. A cloud of dust shoots up into the rain as the crane strikes the side of the building. Immediately, it sags, the two arms bending from the main shaft to curl down around the building.
Alex Glista also witnessed the collapse. He told CTV News Channel that he remembered feeling concerned while watching the crane rock in the wind, but assumed that “nothing will happen.”
“But then, all of a sudden we kind of heard this loud noise and looked up, and out the window, we could see the crane just starting to fall,” he said.
The building it landed on was still under construction, and Glista said the crane, “kind of split in half,” on impact.
“I think watching it fall was just a real demonstration of the power of Mother Nature,” Glista said. “You really have to respect that, and be prepared for hurricanes.”
Dorian left almost 500,000 customers without power across Atlantic Canada as it swept through with hurricane-force winds and buckets of rain. It was initially expected to hit as a Category 1 hurricane, but was updated to a post-tropical cyclone before it made landfall near Halifax.
As the storm raged on, most of the crane was still perched on the building. Crews won’t be able to reach it until the winds and rain have calmed down.
“There is some concern that potentially more (of the crane) could come crashing down to the ground with this next set of winds and weather coming,” Glista said.
