A recent construction crane collapse in Toronto's Leaside neighbourhood is just the latest in a growing list of similar events to occur in the city over the past several years.

As the construction crane capital of North America, Toronto currently has more cranes dotting the skyline than the rest of the continent combined. And when you have that volume of construction machinery concentrated in the city, the odd accident is bound to happen.

Harrowing images have emerged after a crane collapsed near Vanderhoof Avenue and Brentcliffe Road, just south of Eglinton Avenue East, around 3 p.m. on Thursday.

Photographer Jonathan Careless shared aerial photos of the devastation after the crane working on The Frederick Condominiums, a 28-storey condominium building from developer Camrost-Felcorp, failed and crashed into the rising structure.

Fire officials have confirmed that the crane operator was able to evacuate safely, and that nobody was injured in the collapse.

If Thursday's incident sounds all too familiar, that's because crane collapses have become concerningly frequent with new Toronto builds, with at least five significant collapses occurring in the region in recent years.

Crane collapses in Toronto reached a concerning peak in 2020, when three separate incidents occurred in the span of just a few months.

A crane that was used in the construction of the newly opened TD Terrace tower at 160 Front Street West collapsed and struck a building in a July 16, 2020 incident.

Just a few weeks later, on August 6, 2020, another crane working on a residential development from The Daniels Corporation in Regent Park toppled into the River Street and Dundas Street East intersection. Fortunately, no one was injured, though the collapse left at least 1,000 in the area without power.

At least 1,000 people without power in Toronto following crane collapse https://t.co/2c4x3aJxZw #Toronto #PowerOutage pic.twitter.com/T8TmDeQZH0

— blogTO (@blogTO) August 6, 2020

For the third time in four months, another crane collapsed at the site of Mount Pleasant Crosstown station on the cursed LRT project back in November 2020 when a sinkhole below the construction machinery opened up.

Problems with Toronto cranes may have peaked in 2020, but issues persisted the following year when a small crane known as a building maintenance unit at the L Tower collapsed atop the 58-storey structure. It was a particularly frustrating collapse, especially for residents who had already endured years of issues with the tower.

Crane atop Toronto condo collapses after years of issues and complaints https://t.co/jIjTrTIiHr #Toronto #Crane

— blogTO (@blogTO) July 12, 2021

While not quite as cataclysmic as a crane collapse, the biggest story about crane-related danger out of the city in 2022 involved a construction worker who was caught on a crane's lines and dangled precariously from the aforementioned TD Terrace office tower — the very site where a crane collapsed just two years earlier.

Another construction incident made headlines in 2023, when construction scaffolding rained down from a condo development at Spadina and Bremner amid high winds.

Elsewhere in the GTA, recent crane incidents have included a 2018 collapse at a residential development at Erin Mills Parkway and Eglinton in Mississauga and, perhaps most notably, the headline-grabbing "crane girl" of 2017 and the similar case of a topless woman rescued from a crane in 2018.