Worker saw his colleague hit by crane on bridge
A MACHINE operator yesterday told an inquiry he saw his colleague covered in blood after he was hit by a crane during construction of t he Queensferry Crossing.
Lukas Holis said t he i ncident i n which John Cousin died happened minutes after the victim and another engineer arrived to check the equipment.
Mr Holis, 24, said the crane, near the north tower of the bridge over the Forth, suffered a burst hose the day before the accident last April. He told his supervisor and crane company the GGR Group arranged for someone to come and fix it.
The next day Mr Holis accompanied the engineer, Stewart Clark, from the shore by boat.
Mr Holis, from the Czech Republic, said Mr Clark got into the cab of the crane, started it up and lowered the boom, which started leaking again.
Mr Holis went to get some absorbent granules to mop the leak, and when he returned five minutes later, Mr Cousin was standing on the bridge deck under the main boom and Mr Clark was on the crane.
He agreed he had told a Health and Safety Executive investigator that he heard the two fitters talking and laughing, and he was ‘not sure’ if he heard Mr Cousin, 62, asking about removing a pin. Mr Holis told the inquiry, at Stirling Sheriff Court, that when the tragedy occurred he was at the back of the crane.
He said: ‘I heard a noise like steel on steel, scraping, and just spun around. I saw John Cousin holding his hands up and the flying jib fell onto him.
‘I ran over to him and tried to give him first aid.’
He said Mr Cousin was lying on the bridge deck, ‘very clearly injured’.
Mr Holis said: ‘I just shouted for help because I could see blood and everything.’
Mr Holis said he did not know how the jib, which extends the machine’s r each, became detached from the crane but it happened ‘ minutes’ after Mr Clark arrived.
He said Mr Clark, and Mr Cousin, who was from Northumberland, had been ‘working together’ on the crane.
He told Barney Ross, advocate for Mr Cousin’s family, that he had not seen whether the jib also struck Mr Clark.
Mr Ross refused to give an undertaking to the inquiry that he would not criticise the actions of Mr Clark, who is expected to give evidence.
Mr Cousin was a foreman fitter for Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors, the consortium that built the £ 1.35billion bridge.
The inquiry, before Sheriff William Gilchrist, continues.