Plummeting 200 feet through the cool spring air to an East Side street as his massive tower crane collapsed beneath him, rigger John Della Porta had just one thought:
“I knew I was going to die.”
He came very close.
Della Porta – a broken shadow of his former burly self – is reemerging to testify against his former friend and boss, master crane rigger Thomas Rapetti, who goes on trial today on seven counts of manslaughter in the catastrophe.
Della Porta left his Lindenhurst, L.I., home early on March 15, 2008, to raise a 30-ton tower crane at a luxury condo tower going up at 51st St. and Second Ave.
Della Porta was standing inside the metal gridwork of his crane, trying to position its mooring collar to a 19th-floor beam on the building, when all hell broke loose at 2:20 p.m.
“There was a huge, very extremely loud noise and the crane had fallen,” Della Porta said in a sworn deposition obtained by the Daily News.
“The next thing I know is I was buried in rubble. . . . I thought, here I am now buried alive and I’m going to die because no one can hear me. I couldn’t see anything. I knew I was going to die. “
Rescue workers pulled him out after a terrifying half-hour buried in the debris. He awoke in Bellevue Hospital “unable to speak, unable to move.”
In the deposition, Della Porta, 45, recites his litany of injuries: fractured skull, blind in his left eye, fractured shoulders, dislocated elbow, fractured femur, punctured lungs, multiple rib fractures, broken vertebrae, crushed left leg, skin grafts, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Five of his friends and co-workers – Anthony Mazza, Santy Gallone, Brad Cohen, Aaron Stephens and Clifford Canzona – were killed, along with crane operator Wayne Bliedner and a tourist from Florida, Odin Torres.
Manhattan prosecutors say Rapetti, once revered as one of the top crane riggers in the city, knowingly used too few slings to hoist the 9,000-pound metal mooring collar.
Investigators determined that slings had torn and the collar had plummeted, knocking out support beams. The toppling crane demolished several buildings.
In a move to blunt the emotional impact of witnesses like Della Porta, Rapetti has waived his right to a jury trial and is placing his fate in the hands of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Roger Hayes alone.
Meanwhile, Della Porta struggles to get through each day.
Asked to describe his pain after the disaster on a scale of one to 10, Della replied: “It was 10 at times; it was 20 at times.”
