An arborist miraculously emerged unscathed after a crane that was lifting him into the air toppled onto an upstate New York house Monday.
The potentially deadly mishap took place in the Albany suburb of North Greenbush, where homeowner Robert Shappy said the worker was about 100 feet up, preparing to trim a tree, when the crane "came crashing down."
"I heard and I ran out, my wife ran out, and he kept saying, 'I'm not hurt. I'm not hurt,'" Shappy told News10.
After the unidentified man's coworkers pulled branches off him and he got to his feet, Shappy asked him, "Any broken bones or anything like that?"
The man replied, "No, no, I'm OK. I'm OK. I'm not hurt," Shappy said.
"Which is amazing," he added.
Video of the aftermath showed the front end of the truck resting on the roof of Shappy's brick ranch house, with its undercarriage facing the street.
Shappy said the accident apparently unfolded when one of the boom truck's braces sank into the septic field on the side of his house.
Shappy said that the electricity to his house was turned off and that he and his wife would likely be heading to a motel "because they told me it's going to be a while to get this all fixed and repaired."
"I didn't expect anything like this," he said. "I expect(ed) they were gonna come, take the trees away, clean up the mess and go, and I pay them and it'd be all over with."
