Chase Tower Cleaners, Houston

When cleaning granite and washing windows on the 1,049-foot-tall JPMorgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston, one wrong move can make for a very bad day. "It is in the hands of God ... destiny," Jose-Luis Riquelme (pictured), who specializes in working at extreme heights, said Tuesday. "If I die doing this, I'll die doing what I enjoy." That's not to say they are daredevils. They take plenty of precautions as they attack a three-month project to bathe the five-sided building, which has about 3,100 windows and more than two acres of glass. A falling phone could hit 120 mph before reaching the sidewalk. The key to success for the job, which pays as much as $22 an hour, is not working scared, but staying aware that working on the sides of a 75-level building is a uniquely perilous situation. Among the guidelines: No quick movements, leave stresses at home, equally distribute weight across the scaffolding. "If someone would ask, 'Are you guys crazy?' I'd say, 'Of course not,' " said LaRue Coleman, whose companies, AMS Texas and JOBS Building Services, maintain the facades of many downtown buildings. "We know what we do," continued Coleman, who started as a window cleaner nearly 40 years ago in college. "We understand how to do it and the safety involved." He stressed that workers are trained before taking on high-rise duties. Still, a peek straight over the edge is all it takes to race the pulse and dizzy the vision of the uninitiated. "Fear is good. It lets you know there is danger," said Riquelme, who shared a scaffold Tuesday with Carlos Atilio and Milton Tovar as they cleaned the side of the Chase Tower. It moved spookily as the wind kicked up. Atilio, 39, is among the most experienced on skyscrapers. The native of Guatemala became a window washer out of necessity nearly 20 years ago and seems nearly as comfortable on the platform as he would in his living room. "I'm grateful to this country," he said of the opportunity to make a better life for himself and his children. Tovar, 34, originally from Honduras, has done high-rise work for six years. He's a religious man who often says a silent prayer before stepping out on the platform.
He, like the others, wears long sleeves to protect himself from the sun and drinks plenty of water. The new kid, Riquelme, 28, who recently moved from Chile, can't get enough of heights. He spends his spare time climbing rocks and mountains. His highest yet came last year when he climbed the 22,834-foot Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina. Unlike some buildings, such as the U.S. Capitol or San Antonio's Tower of the Americas, where workers have rappelled down the sides, the Chase Tower has a high-tech scaffold system mounted on tracks and permanently attached to the roof. The stage, as the platform is known, is less than 3 feet wide, 40 feet long and surrounded by railing. Designed specifically for the Houston tower by the Tractel company of Canada, it is suspended by more than 100 miles of steel wire wound into four support cables that can hold 4,000 pounds.



Although rare, when window washers fall, the end is brutal. In Houston in 1987, two window washers fell 32 floors from a Pennzoil Place tower — with scaffolding — on a pedestrian, who was also killed. In New York City last year, two brothers from Ecuador plunged 47 stories, with one killed and the other miraculously surviving after being in a coma for weeks. As the scaffolding makes its way up and down the Chase building, window washers get some surprise glimpses at life inside. People have been known to smile, wave and hold up signs, as well as to try to ignore them. Like priests, the washers seem to safeguard their secrets from some jobs, but insist there really hasn't been that much to see at the Chase Tower.
Those inside are sometimes caught off guard. "It is a little bit startling because you know you're 40 stories up and somebody is outside sudsing up your window," said lawyer Mike Morfey, who was impressed by their calmness. "It was like they were working on the corner." Standing on the roof of the Chase Tower, Phil Sokulski, a manager for AMS, seemed envious of the window washers. "This is as high as you can get in Houston without flying," he said.