It is the kind of job in which it’s imperative to avoid “the one thing that can go wrong.”
Two high-rise window-washers probably have a deeper appreciation of that rule, after spending a harrowing few minutes suspended from an apartment building on Harrison Avenue.
Thursday morning they were working at Tai Tung Village, a retail/living complex developed in 1960, when one side of the scaffolding they were working off of on the 13th floor gave way.
This caused the platform to pitch sharply downward -- throwing one of the workers off, such that he was dangling by a rope. The other worker remained on the platform, but it was tilted dangerously to the right.
Boston firefighters arrived within minutes of the collapse -- and it was soon apparent that the easiest way to rescue the workers -- using a ladder truck -- would be impossible because they were up too high.
So it became an inside job, explained Boston Fire Captain Jonathan Hernandez.
“Obviously 12, 13, 14 stories up makes it a little bit difficult,” Hernandez said. “Luckily there were windows that we could use to bring the workers in.”
Had it not been for windows, Hernandez says firefighters would have had to go to the roof and deploy ropes.
“That would have been a little bit more difficult and it would have taken more time, too.”
In all, the men probably spent about ten minutes in suspension before firefighters pulled them to safety through windows -- to the cheers of onlookers who gathered below.
One of them was Andres Madeo, who recorded the rescue on his cellphone.
“Thank God fire department came here quickly,” he said. “Thank God guy’s alive... both guys alive. And everything’s fine.
Hernandez suggests it was no accident that this accident didn't end in tragedy.
"Both workers are in the custody of Boston EMS and they both appear to be safe and sound," Hernandez said. "They weren't injured in any way. Seems like they were pretty well-trained for what they do."
High-rise window-washing accidents are fairly rare, at least if you go by reports to OSHA. In the last approximately two years, about a dozen incidents were reported to the agency.
Falls from more than three stories are more often than not, fatal -- though one window washer fell more than 40 stories in Manhattan in the early 2000s and survived -- though he was badly injured.
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