Videos recently released by the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police show with excruciating clarity a falling tower crane mast section as it struck cars passing an apartment building project, stunned and injured motorists and the grief-stricken rigging and erection crew in the minutes following the tragedy.

One crew member, 27-year-old Jorge de la Torre, fell to his death with the crane tower section and a work platform. The events that began about 4:30 pm on April 4 were recorded by a bridge camera and by body cameras worn by police who rushed to the jobsite.

The intimate videos of both the accident and its immediate aftermath—including the emotional agonies sustained by the crane crews—are especially notable since such images are rarely captured by so many cameras and perspectives and distributed to the media. Phone, project and security cameras and police body cameras, however, in this case created a detailed visual record of the accident, including crew members describing what they believe occurred.

The unedited videos are likely to be used as evidence in lawsuits. One of three people injured in the partial crane collapse in May has already filed a $50-million lawsuit against the prime contractor, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based KAST Construction, Phoenix Rigging & Erecting and three other firms. Brief edited clips from both the body cameras and bridge camera have been shown on Fort Lauderdale television stations beginning July 18. 

The 43-story apartment building project, Gables Riverwalk, was already an imposing structure on a seven-story base at the edge of a river and the Southeast Third Avenue Bridge that crossed the river.

The crane section struck the bridge only a minute or so after the bridge gate was lifted to allow traffic to cross again. A bridge tender's camera captured the mast section plummeting onto a black SUV. A confused driver emerged from her car, walked away, looked back at the wreck and then sat on the bridge wall and leaned against the guard railing, taking in what had just happened.

"Ma'am, what hurts?" one of several people around her asked.

She paused a moment. "Um," she replied, "Absolutely nothing."

A police officer a few minutes later asked her again if she was hurt, and she said no again, but added "My mind is pretty messed up." She asked for her phone and the police officer said he would get it out of the car for her along with the purse that contained her ID.

Another driver, also apparently unhurt, came toward a police officer, but the officer ordered him to move along. 

"Go over there, away from the crane," an officer ordered.

The man extended his arms in exasperation, saying, "It's already fallen."

But the officer insisted, saying "It could keep falling," and the man complied.

Other police drove to the jobsite and hurried to locate the crane crew. Inside the gate, several officers approached four employees of Phoenix Erecting & Rigging sitting glumly at the back of a tool shed. At least two different officers took names, addresses and phone numbers.

One crew member, sitting at the edge of the toolshed, held his head in his hands much of the time. Another crew member, in a dark shirt, walked here and there, distractedly. They were only a short distance, maybe 20 steps, from the tower crane base where de lat Torre had landed in his fall.

A crew member who identified himself to police as crew boss said he was standing on the work platform and "[de la Torre] was behind me, and all we heard was just a loud noise, and the tower just flipped over." The police officer said, "And it came on top of him?" and the crew leader said "yes."

In another discussion with another officer, the crew boss speculated that a cable had failed.

And how had he survived? He said he was tied off to a cable on the building and that when the crane section and work platform fell he was able to grab hold of the building.

Outside, a short distance form the gate, a Phoenix Erecting & Rigging supervisor in a red polo shirt wearing a backpack was trying to get into the project gate to reach the crew. He was approached by a police officer.

"My people are working" on the project, he told the officer excitedly, indicating the direction of the building frame.

The officer said, "We have one person hurt."

"One fall, right?" the man confirmed, and the officer said yes, adding "but you can't go over there right now."

The man said OK, then took a phone call and explained his predicament to the person on the other end. "Estoy acqui abajo,"—I'm here below.

Later, the erecting and rigging crew joined dozens of other workers who were present that day on the sidewalks. The bosses had been taking headcounts to make sure no one else had been hurt or was outside.

The Phoenix Erecting & Rigging supervisor with the backpack was on the street reunited with his crew and others gathered on the sidewalks and streets, which had been taped off by police still worrying about anything else falling. The supervisor comforted the distracted, pacing crew member in the dark shirt with a hug and one hand gently cupping the crew member's head; then the supervisor embraced another man who wasn't part of the rigging crew. It is hard to tell from the video who was consoling whom as the crafts lingered on the sidewalks with the knowledge that someone on the project has died that day in a terrible fall.