TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Two of the three bedrooms at a Tallahassee home are destroyed after a crane toppled onto the house.
The homeowner says he hired Collins Land Services to remove a tree. Collins sub-contracted out the crane work to Forgotten Coast Crane Service.
And in what TPD is calling a freak accident due to mechanical failure, the crane fell.
WTXL reached out to the crane service for an explanation of what happened, but the person who answered the phone hung up on us.
We caught up with the homeowner on Thursday. He says he is grateful that neither he nor his daughter was home at the time and no one was hurt.
And if that accident wasn't stressful enough, get this, it happened on the eve of the soft opening of his new restaurant.
Adam Kent will not soon forget the night before his new business opened. In fact, Kent was at Ma's Diner in Bannerman Crossing getting ready for the opening when he got the call that a giant crane had fallen on his house. He rushed right home.
"The big truck was at a 45 degree angle in the street and the crane itself was across the house," said Kent.
He says the hydraulic system failed, and the crane just tipped over.
"It didn't go all the way through the walls, but it did do significant damage," said Kent. "I'm not sure if it will be replaceable or if it will have to be torn down."
But not even a 100-ton crane could stop Ma's from serving its new customers on Thursday morning. Kent says the accident actually made him feel less stressed about the opening.
"There was nothing I could do. I was already stressed out and I got there and I was just glad everyone was OK and it lightened my stress load," said Kent.
Next steps for Kent include talking to attorneys, dealing with insurance, finding a temporary place to stay, and looking at the bright side.
"I was taking the trees out so if any storm came through this wouldn't happen but I got a crane instead, much more interesting," said Kent.
Kent says he and his daughter were never in danger, that Forgotten Coast and Collins Trees are both great companies, and they would have never done that tree work so close to the house with people in the home due to safety issues.
Kent owns the new Ma's Diner with business partner Michael Robinson.
