OLYMPIA, Wash. — A cross in the median on Mercer Street marks where a crane crashed to the ground in 2019 killing four people and injuring many more. For parents Andrea and Henry Wong, it was the day they lost their daughter.
“For me personally – I still deal with it a day at a time,” Henry Wong said. “This incident which we will not call an accident was entirely preventable,” Andrea Wong added.
Sarah Pantip Wong, a 19-year-old freshman at Seattle Pacific University, died when the falling crane crushed the car she was riding in. A 71-year-old pedestrian and two ironworkers were also killed in the collapse.
“To be able to talk about what happened and to also have the ability to do something about it so that this doesn’t happen to another family actually helps us a lot,” Andrea Wong said.
Pain has turned to action for this grieving family, together they crafted what would become House Bill 2022. The bill, currently working its way through Olympia, would add new restrictions for crews operating cranes in Washington state.
“The heart of it is a permit program it requires a prime contractor of a construction project to require a permit from Labor and Industries before they can erect, reconfigure and dismantle a tower crane,” Andrea Wong said.
Friday, their bill passed the House and now moves to the Senate – where it’s one step closer to becoming law.
“The moment that we understood that she had passed was the moment we decided that we had to do something about it so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else,” Andrea Wong said.
The Department of Labor and Industries investigated and determined the collapse was caused by the companies not following the manufacturer’s instructions for dismantling the structure.
A jury awarded $150 million to the victims and their families in the deadly 2019 crane collapse in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood.