Rostock brings in five mobile cranes to secure a cracked 65-meter shipyard crane as 44 apartments stay empty

A passer-by noticed the damage to the Neptun PWK 40 crane on Oct. 23 and told its owner, the Förderverein Tradition Ostseeschifffahrt, a nonprofit that runs the 65-meter crane as an event and wedding venue after a renovation of about €2 million finished in 2024. A technical check found a damaged load-bearing strut in the boom, the city said. Because the roughly 68-ton boom could fall onto the building on Hellingstraße, about 100 residents and business tenants had to leave.

Wind ruled out work over the weekend. The mobile cranes arrived in pieces and were assembled on Oct. 26 and 27, and shortly after midnight on Oct. 28 two workers went up in a basket hung from one of them to inspect the break by floodlight, Nordkurier reported. That morning Senator Chris von Wrycz Rekowski, who is in charge of the fire service, said the loads were under control. Four cranes now hold the structure, two on the boom and two on the damaged tension bar, and the fifth carries the work basket.

The city dropped its first plan to weld the break, because welding would have required a lengthy testing process, the senator said. Crews will instead clamp the bar, tie it back with steel cables, cut it through to dress the edges and bolt perforated steel plates across the joint. The hook is coming off too. Von Wrycz Rekowski named faulty earlier welding and rainwater collecting inside the bar as possible causes. Roland Methling, the association's chairman and a former mayor, told NDR the crane had been inspected regularly but admitted the association missed the crack. Its photos show signs of the damage going back about four weeks.

If the wind cooperates, the contractor expects to finish by Friday, Oct. 30, and a structural engineer then has to confirm the crane is safe. Residents can return no earlier than Nov. 2, according to the city.