No link seen in N.Y. crane accidents

NEW YORK —  As the Manhattan district attorney launches a criminal investigation into Friday’s crane collapse that killed two construction workers and seriously injured a third, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Sunday that the latest accident was unrelated to a March crane collapse that killed seven people.

“It would appear that there is no connection whatsoever between the two accidents,” Bloomberg said. “They’re very different things.”

He said city prosecutors and building inspectors were investigating Friday’s collapse.

Based on an initial inquiry, “it would appear that they had all permits in place and that they had been inspected just two days before,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor said that residents evacuated from buildings near the collapse had returned to their homes, and that others who lived in the apartment building struck by the crane should be back by the middle of the week.

In the most recent accident, a crane on the Upper East Side snapped from its turntable about 200 feet above the street, causing its cab, boom and machine deck to fall and crash into the apartment building, authorities said.

It followed a March 15 accident in which a steel collar being installed around a crane fell, striking another collar below it and causing the crane to crash into a building. A town house was leveled in the collapse.

After the recent accident, all crane operations in the city were suspended until today, and four cranes similar to the one that collapsed Friday are out of commission indefinitely pending an investigation.

Two workers -- Donald Leo, 30, and Ramadan Kurtaj, 27 -- were killed in Friday’s accident and a third, Simeon Alexis, remained hospitalized in serious condition with a chest injury.