Chapter 19 A sudden sound
More than two hours later, before dawn broke in the sky, roosters began to crow in the suburbs of Beijing. When the first rooster crowed, the temperature at the Jinxiu Mountain and River construction site on the east fourth ring road suddenly dropped by several degrees. The workers who had stayed overnight there could not help but curl up in their sleep. It was already summer in late June and it was time to turn on the air conditioner, but the workers who were fast asleep had not yet noticed this abnormality. At this time, the fifth star of the Big Dipper, Yuheng, suddenly lit up a few times.
After dawn, around 7am, some people woke up one after another. In one dormitory, there were several sneezes. A worker rubbed his nose and said, "It's summer, and you still have a cold ? Hey, do you feel that the weather seems a bit cool?"
The person next to him looked up at the sky and said, "It didn't say it would rain today, but the sky is a bit cloudy. I guess it's going to rain soon, right? There are many times when the weather forecast is not serious. This is normal."
The workers didn't care and started working one after another. The construction schedule was quite tight. They basically started working in the morning and worked until nine or ten o'clock in the evening.
Until almost noon, the construction site was proceeding in an orderly manner and everything was normal. However, people who came to the construction site from outside inexplicably felt that the temperature here seemed to be a little lower than outside, and they got goose bumps on their bodies even though they were wearing short sleeves.
At noon, under the 33rd floor of a business building, the foreman held a walkie-talkie, looked up and shouted at the tower crane: "Lower, lower, lower the steel cable, and deliver this batch of materials to the 15th floor. The faster ones are waiting for them, and they are urging us. Come down after you deliver this batch of materials. It's almost time for lunch."
"Understood!" the crane driver replied on the intercom.
A moment later, more than two tons of construction materials were lifted up by the tower crane and hoisted to the fifteenth floor under construction.
"Creaky, creaky!" The tower crane turned its swing arm and lifted the material up. When the height rose to the thirteenth floor, the swing arm suddenly paused, and the taut wire rope swayed left and right and began to vibrate.
The foreman quickly yelled into the intercom: "What's going on?"
"I don't know, maybe there's something wrong with the motor..." Before the reply on the intercom was finished, the cargo in the air suddenly collapsed, and more than two tons of construction materials fell down from the thirteenth floor in an instant.
"Boom!" In the blink of an eye, cement, steel bars and other materials all fell to the ground. People who were close to them rolled and crawled around, raising a cloud of dust on the ground. Fortunately, no one was standing in that area, otherwise they would have been smashed into mud.
After a brief silence, the foreman wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, picked up the intercom and said tremblingly: "Come down, come down quickly, let the maintenance worker go up to see what's going on. Wasn't the tower crane inspected last month? How come it broke down?"
"How should I know? These guys must have cut corners during the inspection." The tower crane driver cursed a few times and was about to push open the door to get out. However, he didn't expect that as soon as he stood up from his seat, several screws in the middle part of the tower crane were broken off with a "bang". Then the tower body that was connected and fixed began to tilt slightly. The driver was stunned on the spot. The people below watched helplessly as the tower crane, which was dozens of meters high, tilted from the upper part towards the building. After just a few seconds, the tower body smashed onto the stairs with a "bang". After sliding down for a distance, the tower crane car above was stuck on a protruding building and did not slide down any further.
"Gulp" the tower crane driver was stunned for a long time, then swallowed his saliva, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and felt his throat was full of fire, and he couldn't utter a word.
Less than five minutes after the problem occurred, the project supervisor and the general manager rushed over. A middle-aged man in his fifties asked with a grim expression: "What happened to the crane?"
"Mr. Huang must have encountered a malfunction. It could be that a certain link was not detected during the repair," explained the foreman.
“Are there any casualties?”
"No, the driver is still trapped up there. But we see that the crane will not fall down anymore. Someone has gone upstairs to organize a rescue."
Mr. Huang's expression looked better then. The most feared thing on a construction site is a fatal accident. If no one was injured and it was just a problem then it would be easier to deal with.
"Hurry up and organize a rescue operation, then troubleshoot the problem and resume work this afternoon!" Mr. Huang said with a frown.
"Okay, okay, I'll arrange it right away," the foreman nodded in agreement. Not long after, the trapped crane driver was rescued. When he reached the ground, his legs were shaking. It was obvious that he had not yet recovered from the trauma of the accident.
The maintenance personnel then began to check and found that the work at other construction sites was continuing as usual. Although tower crane collapses might not happen once every few years, they were not too unfamiliar. After the false alarm, everything returned to normal.
"Don't just stand there and eat first, then get back to work..." The foreman called the workers to eat on time.
People in the business building evacuated one after another. Ten minutes later, when everyone was walking towards the cafeteria , there was a sudden violent tremor in the business building at the back. Everyone turned around in surprise and heard a loud bang. The ground was shaking a little, and a large cloud of thick smoke and dust was pouring out from all directions.
The dust took a full quarter of an hour to clear away. The people at the construction site rushed into the building in a daze. After a while, a shocking and unbelievable situation was confirmed.
"The supermarket and shopping mall on the underground first floor of the business building, as well as the parking lots on the underground second and third floors, all collapsed. The underground third floor, which had been completed, became a big hole and collapsed completely."
Half an hour later, the project supervisor, construction manager, vice president of Jinxiu Shanhe Real Estate, and people from the quality inspection department held a meeting on the spot to determine the cause of the problem.
The person in charge of quality inspection pulled Mr. Huang aside and said with a frown, "Tell me, did you cut corners?"
Mr. Huang shook his head and said firmly, "How is it possible? This building was built by our company and will be rented out in the future. We don't even plan to sell it. In other words, would you cut corners on the house you built for your own family? What nonsense are you talking about? Is the company crazy to do this?"
"If there is no problem with the quality, then it's easy to say. It may be that there is a problem in a certain link during the construction or in the construction drawings."
Mr. Huang frowned and said, "This is even more impossible. You know our company's qualifications. We have built at least twelve commercial buildings of this type in six cities in the past five years, and none of them have collapsed. We are very experienced, and there will be no problems with the construction."
"Then tell me, what's going on?" The quality inspector pointed to the collapsed business building behind him and said, "Is God playing a joke on you? Or are we all hallucinating? Immediately, immediately produce a report and find out where the problem lies. The leader in charge of urban construction and our bureau have already called me. I must see the investigation report tomorrow."
"No problem, I'll organize it right now..." Mr. Huang sighed and said with a headache, "Today is really a weird day. The tower crane broke in the middle and the three underground floors collapsed. How come it took a whole day for something to happen?"
