ReportWire

Tag: crane

  • Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrives in Manhattan, kicking off New York’s holiday season

    The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on Saturday, marking the start of New York City’s holiday season.This year’s tree is a 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from the upstate town of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany. After being cut down this week, it made the roughly 150-mile journey south on a flatbed truck, drawing curious onlookers along the way.The crowds were much bigger at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where workers used cranes to hoist the 11-ton tree into position overlooking the iconic skating rink. People gathered with coffee cups and phones as crews secured the spruce and began the careful process of stabilizing it.The tree will soon be decorated with more than 50,000 multicolored, energy-efficient LED lights and crowned with a Swarovski star weighing 900 pounds.It will be lit Dec. 3 during a live TV broadcast hosted by country music star Reba McEntire and remain on display until mid-January, after which it will be milled into lumber for use by the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.The tree was donated by homeowner Judy Russ and her family. She said it was planted by her husband’s great-grandparents in the 1920s.”For this to now become the center of New York City Christmas is incredible,” Russ told the radio station 1010 WINS.The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up by workers in 1931 to raise spirits during the Great Depression. The comparatively modest 20-foot balsam fir was outfitted with garlands handmade by the workers’ families.The tradition stuck as the first tree-lighting ceremony was held in 1933.

    NEW YORK —

    The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on Saturday, marking the start of New York City’s holiday season.

    This year’s tree is a 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from the upstate town of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany. After being cut down this week, it made the roughly 150-mile journey south on a flatbed truck, drawing curious onlookers along the way.

    The crowds were much bigger at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where workers used cranes to hoist the 11-ton tree into position overlooking the iconic skating rink. People gathered with coffee cups and phones as crews secured the spruce and began the careful process of stabilizing it.

    The tree will soon be decorated with more than 50,000 multicolored, energy-efficient LED lights and crowned with a Swarovski star weighing 900 pounds.

    It will be lit Dec. 3 during a live TV broadcast hosted by country music star Reba McEntire and remain on display until mid-January, after which it will be milled into lumber for use by the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.

    The tree was donated by homeowner Judy Russ and her family. She said it was planted by her husband’s great-grandparents in the 1920s.

    “For this to now become the center of New York City Christmas is incredible,” Russ told the radio station 1010 WINS.

    The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up by workers in 1931 to raise spirits during the Great Depression. The comparatively modest 20-foot balsam fir was outfitted with garlands handmade by the workers’ families.

    The tradition stuck as the first tree-lighting ceremony was held in 1933.

    Source link

  • Man gives stolen statues to ex for Valentine’s Day to win her back, Florida cops say

    Man gives stolen statues to ex for Valentine’s Day to win her back, Florida cops say

    A man in Florida is accused of stealing two statues of sandhill cranes and giving them to his ex-girlfriend because the birds “mate for life,” a sheriff said.

    A man in Florida is accused of stealing two statues of sandhill cranes and giving them to his ex-girlfriend because the birds “mate for life,” a sheriff said.

    John Cobb via Unsplash

    A man in Florida gave a pair of crane statues to his ex-girlfriend in an attempt to win back her affections for Valentine’s Day, a sheriff said.

    The problem? He’s accused of stealing them from a woman’s yard.

    A woman in Lakeland called the sheriff’s office to report two statues of sandhill cranes were missing from her lawn, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a Feb. 14 Facebook video.

    They were a gift from her late husband, she told deputies, and it was very important to her to see them returned.

    “Our detectives took that personally,” the sheriff said.

    They started a search in the community for the crane statues and found them shortly after at another woman’s house, Judd said.

    The detectives explained that the statues had been taken from another home, and the woman was “mortified,” the sheriff said.

    The woman told investigators her ex-boyfriend had gifted them to her, Judd said.

    The cranes were given back to the owner “just in time for Valentine’s Day,” according to the sheriff.

    Investigators learned the ex-boyfriend, a 33-year-old man, rode up to the woman’s house on his bicycle and took the statues because sandhill cranes “mate for life,” the sheriff’s office said.

    The man has 39 previous burglary and theft charges, Judd said.

    He was charged again and taken into custody, the sheriff’s office said.

    Lakeland is about 35 miles east of Tampa.

    Irene Wright is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter. She earned a B.A. in ecology and an M.A. in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News.

    Irene Wright

    Source link

  • A successful liftoff: Space shuttle Endeavour’s rockets are installed

    A successful liftoff: Space shuttle Endeavour’s rockets are installed

    In a delicate maneuver, crews this week successfully lifted into place giant rockets at the California Science Center, the first large components installed at the future home of the space shuttle Endeavour.

    Donated by Northrup Grumman, the solid rocket motors are each the size of a Boeing 757 fuselage and weigh 104,000 pounds. They had to be carefully moved from a horizontal to vertical position by crane before being lowered into place in the new exhibit at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

    One was installed Tuesday, the other Wednesday.

    Crews were then able to place the 177 pins attaching each solid rocket motor to the base of the solid rocket booster, known as the aft skirt. Each pin is 1 inch in diameter and about 2 inches long.

    “It felt great,” California Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph said of the successful installation. “We’ve got two solid rocket motors standing tall in the new building now.”

    Visitors to the museum can now see the top of the rockets from outside the construction site. At one point during the crane lift, the solid rocket motors could even be seen from the 110 Freeway.

    This week’s installations mark the latest milestone in the six-month mission to assemble the permanent exhibit for Endeavour, the last space shuttle orbiter ever built. When completed, it will be arranged in a full stack configuration as if it were ready for launch. It will be the only surviving U.S. orbiter displayed in this position.

    The future home of Endeavour is under construction at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center site.

    (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

    Typically, during the era of space shuttle flights, this procedure would’ve been done at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, the shuttle’s full stack would‘ve been assembled in one of the largest buildings by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work.

    At the California Science Center, crews had to develop unique techniques for the installation. This week, workers put together scaffolding along the aft skirts so they could get where they needed to insert the connecting pins.

    If the aft skirt and solid rocket motors didn’t align correctly, every pin could’ve taken some banging and pounding to insert, and the installation of each rocket could’ve taken all day and into the night.

    Instead, Tuesday’s work began around 9 a.m. and ended before 1 p.m. With one successful installation under their belts, workers were even quicker Wednesday — beginning at 8 a.m. and wrapping up by 10.

    “The crew worked really well, did an excellent job and things came together effectively and quite quickly,” Rudolph said.

    The next step will be to build another 30 vertical feet of scaffolding to install external tank attach rings, which eventually will serve as a connection between the solid rocket motors and the giant orange external tank.

    Later, even more scaffolding will rise to the top of the 116-foot solid rocket motors. That will help workers install the tips of the rockets, known as the forward assembly, which includes the nose cone and forward skirt.

    The forward skirt is particularly important as it will be the primary weight-bearing connection between the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. It is likely to be installed in early December.

    Each solid rocket motor makes up most of the length of the 149-foot solid rocket boosters. At liftoff, the white boosters were set underneath Endeavour’s wings and produced more than 80% of the lift.

    A child in sweat shirt and shorts and carrying a bag walks across a sun-dappled expanse of floor.

    A child walks to the California Science Center in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where the space shuttle is slowly being pieced together.

    (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

    The most dramatic installations will take place after the winter holidays. The external tank will be lifted into place no sooner than early January.

    The Endeavour orbiter will be installed no earlier than the last week of January. Cranes — the tallest of which will be about the height of Los Angeles City Hall — will raise Endeavour from its horizontal position to point vertically to the stars for its final display. The rest of the museum will then be built around it.

    Once complete, the $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will rise 20 stories tall. The California Science Center Foundation is still raising funds for the last $50 million needed for the project.

    Since Endeavour’s arrival at the center in 2012, the orbiter has been on display in the temporary Samuel Oschin Pavilion, essentially a warehouse, where it will be shown until Dec. 31. After that, it could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing.

    Rong-Gong Lin II

    Source link