Crane operator Wayne Bleidner seems to have everything under control in this photo taken less than an hour before disaster struck.
But on a spring-like day under ideal work conditions, a steel collar wrapped around the crane suddenly dislodged as it was being raised and knocked out a mooring (circled at right, in another photo) connecting it to the building’s ninth floor.
The crane collapsed, killing Bleidner and three co-workers, injuring 24 others, destroying a townhouse and damaging six other buildings.
Two other workers and a Miami woman in town for St. Patrick’s Day remained missing.
“We’ve heard nothing. There’s no sign of life so far,” Mayor Bloomberg said at the disaster site at 305 E. 51st St., a planned luxury high-rise.
Relatives of the missing huddled in a Starbucks a block from the scene, guarded by police officers as they waited for news about their loved ones.
“Each passing hour, things get a little more grim,” said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta.
Bleidner, 51, a seasoned veteran, “never makes a mistake” at the controls of a crane, said a source from the operating engineers union. “He was a professional. His skill was above and beyond that job.”
But his skill couldn’t save him.
“The speculation is that a piece called a collar, either through a mechanical error or a human error, fell and cut the attachment at the ninth floor,” Bloomberg said.
The crane had passed an inspection Friday, and none of the site’s 13 open violations over the last 27 months was serious enough to have caused the disaster, Bloomberg said.
Finding the cause of the collapse is now the job of forensic engineers from the city Buildings Department, who are performing lab tests on pieces of the crane.
Work was being done last night on two fronts:
* The townhouse on East 50th Street, where the missing woman had been staying, was hit by a 75-foot section of the crane that included its boom, mast and cab.
“There is a lot of debris . . . that needs to be cleared away in order that we can determine if the search and rescue-mission can continue,” said Buildings Commissiober Pat Lancaster.
* A second section of the crane was leaning against a 19-story red-brick building on East 51st Street. Its removal will likely require two other cranes, and an elaborate process of cutting away one section at a time.
Joey Cuticone, 45, who lives on the 15th floor of that building, heard an awful creaking sound at around 2:20 Saturday and ran to his balcony.
“It was surreal,” he said.
“I saw a worker buried underneath rubble. He wasn’t moving. I saw one of the crane men. He was mangled, dangling over the rubble. It was horrific.”
The condo developer, James Kennelly, said last night there were “no words to describe the level of devastation.” He said the construction manager and crane-operating firm – both hired for their safety records – would “cooperate fully with any and all investigations.”
But retired ironworker Kerry Walker, who lived in the top-floor apartment of the four-story town house and left minutes before it was crushed, had complained that the crane appeared dangerously unstable, his stepson said.
“He knows all about cranes and said this one had no braces, everything was too minimal,” John Viscardi said. “He told one friend on the phone that ‘if you don’t hear from me, it’s because the crane fell on my house.’ ”
Officials at New York Crane, which provided the equipment, could not be reached yesterday.
Reliance Construction Group, contracted by the developers to oversee the site, said in a statement, “We have already launched our own internal investigation.”
Restaurateur Fabio Granato, whose Mini Cooper was seen lying on its side in a photo in Sunday’s Post, missed death by moments.
Granato, owner of Serafina, was preparing to leave for work when he heard “something crashing.”
“I would have gotten in my car just as the crash was happening,” he said, “but I got caught up watching a Mel Gibson movie and was running a little late.”
Additional reporting by John Mazor, Braden Keil and Austin Fenner, with Post wires