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, as well as stunned and injured motorists and the grief-stricken rigging and erection crew in the minutes following the tragedy.

A crew member, 27-year-old Jorge De La Torre, had been high in the air on the tower crane climbing unit work platform preparing to insert the mast section. He fell to his death but another rigger on the platform said he was tied off and did not fall.

The events that began about 4:30 pm on April 4 were recorded by a camera on a nearby bridge 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 crew, are especially notable since such images are rarely captured by so many cameras and distributed to the media. But in this case, security and police body camera video, released to comply with state public records law, 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 has already filed a $50-million lawsuit against the project prime contractor, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based KAST Construction, as well as Phoenix Rigging & Erecting, which employed De La Torre, and three other firms. Brief edited clips from 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 the New River and the Southeast Third Avenue Bridge that crossed it.

See ENR edited video clip below:

The crane section struck the span about one minute 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 hatchback. A confused driver emerged from her car, walked away, looked back at the wreck and sat on the bridge wall and leaned against the guard rail, taking in what had just happened.

"Ma'am, what hurts?" one of several people around the unidentified driver 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 again said no, 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 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," the 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 three employees of Phoenix Rigging & Erecting 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, about 30 steps, from the tower crane base where De La Torre had landed in his 30-story-plus fall and sustained horrific injuries.

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 a discussion with another officer, the crew boss speculated that a cable had failed. He said he survived because he was tied off to a cable on the building, and when the crane section and work platform fell, he was able to grab hold of the structure.

Outside, a short distance from the gate, an unidentified Phoenix Rigging & Erecting supervisor in a red polo shirt wearing a backpack was trying 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 asked, and the officer said yes, but added "you can't go over there right now."

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

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

The Phoenix Rigging & Erecting 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 concerned 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. The supervisor then embraced another man who was not part of the rigging crew.

It is hard to tell from the video who was consoling who as workers lingered on the sidewalks with the knowledge that someone on the project had died that day in a terrible fall.

This story was amended on July 26 to include a more accurate description of the accident stating that the mast section and rigger Jorge De la Torre fell from the tower crane climbing unit work platform.