Rescuers look for 3 missing at deadly crane site

“It’s unbelievable that this happened,” LaGreco said. “We’re going to sue the hell out of them, of course.”

At least 17 people were hurt. Eight remained hospitalized Sunday, including three in critical condition, fire department officials said. Nine others were treated at the scene, including five firefighters, officials said.

No one else had been found in the demolished brownstone as of Sunday, authorities said.

Residents of the affluent block on Manhattan’s East Side said they were grateful the accident occurred on a weekend when fewer people are in the area.

“We would be dead if it wasn’t on a Saturday,” said Bryan Beus, an assistant for an artist who had office space in the crushed townhouse.

Some residents said they had complained to the city several times about the construction site. Crews worked illegal hours and the building was going up too fast, they said.

City officials said they had issued 13 violations to the site in the past 27 months, a normal amount for a project of that size. Inspectors had examined the crane Friday and found nothing wrong with it.

City Building Department records show a caller told officials March 4 that the upper portions of the crane appeared to lack the proper number of safety ties attaching it to the building. A city inspector visited the site and determined March 6 that no violation was warranted.

The collapse comes amid a building boom in New York City and follows a spate of construction accidents in recent months, including a few involving cranes. In 2006, a 13-foot piece of a crane mast that was being dismantled fell and crushed a taxi cab.

Last month at a Donald Trump hotel-condo tower, a worker plummeted 40 stories to his death when a concrete form gave way. A month before that, a crane’s nylon sling broke away and dropped seven tons of steel onto a construction trailer across from ground zero, injuring an architect.

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