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/ Updated
By Phil Helsel
Two crane operators were among four people killed Saturday when their rig fell from a downtown Seattle building and into traffic below, authorities said.
Four other people were injured when a section of the crane collapsed onto six cars at the intersection of Fairview and Mercer, said Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins. The two others who died were in separate cars, he said.
The injured included a mother and her baby. All suffered non-life-threatening injuries, the fire department said.
“They’re doing OK,” Scoggins said of the mother and child. Harborview Medical center said the 25-year-old mother and her 4-month-old baby would be discharged soon. A 28-year-old man is in satisfactory condition.
The crane fell across a building undergoing construction on Mercer Street, NBC affiliate KING5 of Seattle reported.
Investigators had not yet determined what caused the crane to collapse. The fire department said “a full and thorough investigation into the cause of the crane failure is being conducted by Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.”Several people told the station they saw crews working to dismantle it earlier Saturday.
“I was in my apartment when I felt the building shake and heard it land on the street,” said Harrison Kelner, 30, who lives near the intersection where the crane fell.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan tweeted that there was a “major incident” and asked people to avoid the area. “My thoughts and prayers are with those killed and injured,” she said.
A witness told KING5 she was biking to an event at the Seattle Center and she heard a sound “a crash, kind of like thunder.”
“And I thought, oh maybe there’s some thunder in Seattle, even though that’s so rare. And then I heard sirens — the most that I’ve ever heard before,” she said.
Esther Nelson, a biotech research assistant who was working in a building nearby and who saw the crane fall from a break-room window, told the Seattle Times that “it was terrifying.”
“I looked up. The wind was blowing really strong,” she told the newspaper, adding that the crane appeared to be eight or nine stories tall and broke in half, with one part falling down the side of the building and the other onto the street.
Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Seattle office, said nearby observation sites recorded gusts of up to 23 mph around the time of the accident. He described the wind conditions as somewhat typical.