Heavy chains dangling from a tower crane in downtown Seattle hit the Bank of California building Wednesday morning, shattering some exterior glass panels.

Observers said the 300-foot- high crane was swinging wildly, but Turner Construction operations manager Scott Holbrook said the crane was supposed to swing freely in the wind. No one was injured by the falling glass, he said.

The swinging crane rattled the nerves of nearby office dwellers.

Crane safety has been on the brain since a crane collapsed in Bellevue on Nov. 16, killing a man in his apartment and damaging three buildings.

Two weeks after that incident, another crane with serious cracks was dismantled. Days later, structural flaws were discovered and repaired in two other cranes in Western Washington.

In downtown Seattle on Wednesday morning, about 30 people gathered around the windows on the 39th floor of the IDX Tower, adjacent to the Fifth Avenue and Madison Street construction site.

"Nobody cared about anything else but the crane," said Tim Bueneman, senior vice president at the brokerage firm McAdams Wright Ragen. "When I came to work, people were panicking. It was coming within 10 feet of the office window. And it had this big chain hanging from the crane."

Several people were frightened and wanted to go home, he said. When a television reporter called him asking for the business news of the day, Bueneman told him about the crane instead.

"It was kind of exciting," he said. "We had no interesting business news but the crane."

Turner Construction has several large construction projects in Seattle, three of them with tower cranes, Holbrook said. Independent engineering firms have inspected the swinging crane, which was working on the 909 Fifth Avenue condominium project. Turner ordered the inspections in the wake of the recent spate of local crane incidents.

"We are very confident that the cranes are safe and the spinning is a normal reaction," Holbrook said.

The crane was not in operation when the chains hit the glass. Many times at the end of a shift, chains and rigging are left on the boom, Holbrook said.

The rapid swinging prompted Capitol Hill resident John Stamets to e-mail the Seattle P-I at about 10 a.m.

"I wish I had a video of what I just saw. The tower crane at Fifth and Madison rotated wildly in the wind as the most recent squall just hit downtown," he wrote. "It would be interesting to know how they handled this wind event, and if what I saw and still see, is normal."

Ten minutes later, he added: "P.S. Now crane is oscillating through an even greater arc! But more slowly."

Stamets later said on the phone, "It was so dramatic that I thought somebody ought to know about it."

The Department of Labor and Industries, which is overseeing two Bellevue crane investigations, had not heard about the incident, a spokeswoman said.

The high winds kept many cranes shut down Wednesday, in accordance with state regulations, which say "good safety practices" must be used "during periods of high winds."

Willie Steinberg, a 47-year-old crane operator in downtown Seattle, used the day off to take his daughter Christmas tree shopping in North Bend.

Steinberg, who shuts the crane down when gusts reach 35 mph, said high winds have been a doozy this year.

"It's frustrating for some because they don't get a lot of work done, but for me, I get a day off," Steinberg said.

"You just got to make sure everything's tied down on your crane."

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