Hand Signals for Crane Use

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Hand Signals for Crane Use
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• Crane signals are vital to the safety of everyone
  working on a construction project involving crane
  usage.
• Consider that over the past five years there have
  been over 600 deaths relating to crane accidents.

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Pictures of crane hand signals
Move Slowly Use one hand to give any motion
signal and place other hand motionless in front
of hand giving the motion signal.
Trolley Travel Palm up, fingers closed, thumb
pointing in direction of motion, jerk hand
horizontally.
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Pictures of crane hand signals
Lower With arm extended downward, forefinger
pointing down, move hand in small horizontal
circles.
Hoist With forearm vertical, forefinger pointing
up, move hand in small horizontal circle.
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Pictures of crane hand signals
Emergency Stop Both arms extended, palms down,
move arms back and forth horizontally.
Bridge Travel Arm extended forward, hand open
and slightly raised, make pushing motion in
direction of travel.
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Examples of crane safety accidents

• Crane is lifting a pallet of grout mix to the
  roof of a 20 story building.
• Worker on ground starts inadvertently signaling
  for the crane to start lifting the pallet before
  it is complete secure.
• Pallet slips out of rigging spilling all the bags
  of grout mix, no one is hurt.

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Examples of crane safety accidents

• Crane is booming down a load of lumber off the
  roof.
• Truck starts driving underneath load unexpectedly
  and load is coming down and it will hit the
  truck.
• Eye guy on ground does not know the proper signal
  for emergency stop and lumber hits the truck.
• No one is hurt but the truck sustains damage.

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Examples of crane safety accidents

• Crane was booming a load around the building.
• Ground guy mistakenly used the signal for moving
  the boom to the right, when it should have been
  to the left.
• The load struck an A/C unit on the roof of the
  building.
• No one was hurt but there was significant damage
  done to the A/C unit.

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Pictures of crane accidents
Load started to get lifted by inadvertent hand
signal and tipped over.
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Crane hand safety signals

• It is vital to have proper use and understanding
  of crane hand signals.
• With out them construction sites are not as safe
  as they can be.

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Crane hand safety signals

• Statistics vary on the number of accidents
  reported each year for crane accidents.
• One truth is for certain, proper hand signals
  would have prevented many of them.