Enormous air conditioner falls from helicopter onto California street, video shows

A giant helicopter lifts an industrial-size air conditioner from a street in downtown Oakland, California, as construction workers watch from below, a video shows.

Then cables snap, sending the heavy load crashing back to earth as workers dash for safety, the video posted by Rudi Tcruz to Twitter shows. A construction worker yanks off his helmet in apparent dismay at the accident.

“Luckily it wasn’t flying over any buildings,” Tcruz wrote on Twitter. The accident happened at 10:14 a.m. Saturday on Clay Street, which was closed for construction. No one was hurt.

“The helicopter is so loud that when it hit the ground you couldn’t even hear the impact,” Tcruz told The Mercury News. He encountered the scene while on a walk with his brother, Gabriel Tcruz, who shot the video.

“When it hit the ground, debris came shooting out a good 10 or 15 yards,” Rudi Tcruz said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “I was amazed that nobody was hurt.”

A crane lifted the crumpled unit onto a flatbed truck to be hauled away, Rudi Tcruz wrote on Twitter with a photo.

“Here’s the reason you never stand below a load being lifted by a helicopter!” aviation expert Max Trescott wrote on Twitter with a repost of the video.