Dubai: A technician was crushed to death when he tried to separate two cranes that got intertwined 50 metres above the ground in Dubai, police said on Tuesday.
Major Khalid Ebrahim Al Hammadi, Director of the Difficult Missions Squad in the Rescue and Transportation Department of Dubai Police, told Gulf News that the accident happened at a construction site at Dubai Sport City on Saturday.
He said the technician came to the site on Saturday, a day after Friday’s stormy weather, and found that one crane had moved and got intertwined with the second crane in the strong winds. He was trying to separate them when the cranes crushed him between them.
“We were alerted [about the incident] on Saturday afternoon and when we reached the scene, we saw the body stuck more than 15 floors’ high — between the two cranes. He died immediately,” Major Al Hammadi told Gulf News.
He said it was a big challenge for his team as the two cranes could have collapsed and caused a disaster on the site.
“We were very careful and evacuated the place in order not to risk lives.”
Experts and engineers were called in to assess the situation and they confirmed that any move might cause a disaster as the clinging point was 50 metres high. “We made a plan and brought two big cranes and installed them beside the two cranes and then attached parts of the cranes to the new ones and separated them slowly and managed to bring down the technician’s body,” Major Al Hammadi added.
“It was a difficult mission and my team was working at 15-floor height on unstable cranes and risking their lives to extract the body. We are sad that we couldn’t save him,” Major Al Hammadi said.
