Watching the awful tragedy caused by the earthquakes in Turkey, and in general, the biggest problem is obviously removing the rubble to rescue people, why do they not install a crane (2+ days) and use mobile ones in the meantime?
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Cranes are great for moving large quantities of material quickly. But they are not very accurate and lots of stuff gets dropped. They are also very heavy and not at all gentle.
Imagine using a JCB to empty a ceramic flower pot whilst trying to keep your flower alive.
You generally need a large flat stable surface to put a crane on these are not generally available where they would be needed and the area is likely to be prone to aftershocks which makes operating a crane exceedingly dangerous not only for the operator, but anyone underneath it.
Imagine a big bowl full of M&Ms. You must grab a handful without looking at the bowl, this handful must have exactly two green ones. If it has any more or any less than two, someone dies.
That’s why. Cranes are not precise. Someone burried among the rubble can be injured by the crane itself, by the shifting of the rubble, etc.
Firstly there is not enough cranes in Turkey to cover all the affected areas. And secondly the rubble is all laying on top of each other and leaning on each other so you can not remove one piece of rubble without causing another to fall over. Typically the pockets where people survive is caused by two pieces of rubble leaning against each other, similar to how two sides of a roof leans on each other to create the living spaces of a house. If you remove of of the pieces of rubble there is nothing supporting the other piece and it will fall over and crush the people trapped under it. Obviously as time becomes more critical the rescue workers will start using more and more heavy equipment. The workers eventually have to chose between crushing some people who survived the earthquake or letting them die from the elements. But as far as possible they will search thrugh the rubble by hand and using dogs before they bring inn the heavy equipment to clear it out, and then start again once a few pieces have been removed. And when people are located they use as little equipment as possible to extract them in fear of collapsing the rubble on top of them, often having engineers conduct a full survey of the heap of rubble to figure out what they can and can’t do.
Because the piles of rubble is not stable. If you lift one slab, you might be removing the only thing that keeps another piece from falling and crusing someone who is still alive.
Think about putting a pile of books on the end of a ruler sticking over the edge of a table, , then hanging a weight from the other end. If you lift the books, the ruler and weight fall.
In addition to other comments, the loads typically lifted by cranes are cabled and balanced appropriately, and are also structurally sound. Fallen slabs, broken columns, and other items are absolutely *not* balanced, and are also prone to breaking when lifted. So now you’ve added the danger of heavy objects being lifted over trapped people that can suddenly break or crumble, raining down the debris again.
You haven’t seen the right photos. I saw a photo with at least two cranes.
But beyond that… first you need cranes. Then you need a way to get the cranes where they are needed. I don’t know what the crane-availability situation is like in that region, but I do know that some of the major roads are so messed up that even aid agencies are having trouble getting to certain places.
Biggest issue with using cranes or other heavy machinery in disaster response is it’s almost impossible to control the resulting debris shift. With people trapped under tons of unstable steel and concrete, the smallest unintended shifting or settling could crush survivors. There’s also the possibility of rupturing gas lines or water mains that are already damaged by the collapse. Generally you don’t start using heavy machinery until you’ve given up on finding any more survivors and the priority becomes debris removal.
You’ve already hit on the biggest reason: crane deployment is slow. The two days you cite are the difference between life and death for most trapped people.
Their primary purpose is to lift very heavy things precisely, not what you’re trying to do in a rescue situation where time is so critical.
Further, equipment flexibility: you can quickly roll in and use an excavator to lift things like a crane (rigging eye on the bottom of the bucket) but you can’t dig anything up with a crane.
The OP may be thinking of “cranes” with claws, like those used in scrapyards. If so, that’s a very specialized piece of equipment and there aren’t very many of them. Most cranes are for construction, and designed to lift large solid items, not a heap of loose material.
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