UPDATE: Crews Work Through Night to Lift Fallen Crane Off Royal Oak Garage

A Thursday afternoon drama in the 1100 block of Second Street ended with a long final scene that left onlookers up past 1 a.m. Friday.

Royal Oak neighbors, Karen Johns and Tyler Lynch, watched as crews from Judd Industrial Contracting slowly lowered a jack-knifed truck from between the their houses. The truck was lifted into the air at approximately 3:05 p.m. Thursday when a crane arm attached to it collapsed and landed on Lynch's garage.


Judd Industrial Contracting acted as a marionette's puppeteer, using two cranes - one to lift the fallen crane arm from off the garage and a separate crane to gently lower the truck to the ground - in a flawless performance that began shorty after 12:30 a.m. and was completed approximately 20 minutes later.

"I am flabbergasted," said Johns. "It's amazing how everyone came together and how smoothly it all went."

Johns had hired a local tree trimming company to remove a maple tree from her yard and was an eye-witness to the incident that left her neighbor's garage with a severely damaged garage roof.

"I heard a crash and and then I heard the crane operator go, 'Oh, no!" Johns said. 

Standing side by side at 1:15 a.m., Johns and Lynch, who have lived next to each other for three years, were in good spirits considering they had been watching events unfold for more than 10 hours. Both said they were happy no one was hurt and that no one was left homeless by the incident. Neither house was damaged by the afternoon event.

"The garage can be replaced," Lynch said.

Johns, who has lived on Second Street for more than 50 years, offered words of praise for the Royal Oak Police and Fire Departments.

"Once they got here, they were great," she said. 

Fire Chief Chuck Thomas, who remained on the scene throughout the entire event, said he never witnessed anything like it and managed to find some levity in the situation.  

"I thought I heard a plane crashed into a house," said Thomas, who was in his truck when he received a poorly connected cellphone call about the situation. "When I arrived, at first glance it did look like a plane!"

The chief was obviously relieved to discover it was a crane, and not a plane, that had crashed.

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