[BC] Another Tower Collapse?

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

For those who wonder how this could possibly happen, I watched a 
tower come down in the sixties. I was on-site with another field 
engineer from RCA Service Company. We were going to replace an old 
RCA Super Turnstile antenna with a new traveling-wave type. The site 
was somewhere near Richmond, Virginia. We had the antenna assembled 
on "horses" near the bottom of the tower and the tower crew was 
transferring the
hoisting cable from the Johnny-ball that counterbalances the weight 
of the hoisting cable, to the antenna. Somehow, the hook got away, 
and the cable started racing its way up the tower, faster and faster 
and faster. When the hook got to the block near the top of gin pole 
on the tower, it exploded into a shower of red-and-white-hot metal 
and the cable whipped over the top of the tower. On its way down, the 
runaway hoisting cable severed all the guys on one side of the tower. 
I stood and watched this whole thing because I was too uneducated to 
know I was supposed to run. After the hoisting cable severed all the 
guys, it whipped across a rental car and cut it completely in two. 
Several of the tower crew was hiding under cars and trucks in the 
parking lot when I decided that I should also take cover. The tower 
stood for about three or four minutes
until it collapsed into a relatively small pile of scrap. It did not 
lean or fall over; it simply collapsed. It was amazing!


--
Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson