A mobile crane working on a church steeple toppled near Rittenhouse Square this afternoon, killing the crane operator and injuring a woman standing nearby.
The orange aerial lift, working at the First Presbyterian Church at 21st and Walnut Streets, fell at about 1:15 p.m., knocking down a streetlight, shearing off a stoplight and clipping the roof of a building on the north side of the street.
Eyewitnesses said the crane operator was turning the machine when one wheel rolled over a cable access cover, the heavy lid gave way, the machine wobbled then fell.
The operator was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 1:42 p.m., police said.
At 6 p.m., the crane still lay like a felled steel redwood across the intersection and half way down 21st street.
The aerial work platform was positioned on the southeast corner so that workers could check the north face of the 137-year-old First Presbyterian Church.
"We heard the sound. I had no idea what happened but I knew I shouldn't be hearing it," said the church's pastor, Rev. Jesse Garner.
Garner said the church had hired Masonry Preservation Group, of Merchantville, N.J. to perform the "routine survey" of the church's stone exterior.
MPG, which does extensive work in Philadelphia on the maintenance and restoration of historic stone and masonry structures, had brought several of the truck-mounted cranes and set them up around the church, Garner said.
"We have no idea what happened, but right now we're more concerned with the well-being of the people who were injured," Garner said. "They are in our prayers."
Two Comcast technicians, Federico Thillet and William Walker, were two buildings away from the church corner moments before the accident.
Walker, who has worked on cranes before, had completed a cable installation and was standing beside his parked truck when he looked up to watch the operator at work on the ornate russet stone steeple. Just above a winged gargoyle at the level of several small arched windows, Walker could see the operator in the orange mesh nest. "He was about 125 feet up at the top of the fully-extended crane," Walker said.
As the operator turned the crane, one of the four enormous wheels at the base rolled over a cable access panel, Walker said.
"The crane started to tilt and it swayed out about 20 feet into the street. Then it swayed back towards the church," Walker said. "The second time it swung out, it toppled over."
The crane seemed to fall in slow motion, said his coworker, Thillet, who immediately called 911.
Walker sprinted around the corner and saw that the crane had crashed into a Verizon truck parked on the east side of the street. He climbed up and found the operator strapped into the cage by a harness, and dangling over the edge of the truck.
"Sir, are you OK?" Walker asked. "Can you tell me your name?"
There was no response.
As the crane fell, the hydraulic arm bit into the roof and eave of the building at 2015 Walnut. The bricks and debris rained down on a passerby, pinning her to the ground.
Walker, realizing he could do nothing for the crane operator, ran to her to offer help. She told him she thought she had broken her arm, he said.
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