Update on Seattle Fall + Another!

Woman falls 80 feet while washing window at Grove Park Inn: Asheville — A woman washing windows at Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa today fell eight stories, but her injuries are believed to be non- life threatening. About 2:45 p.m., the employee of Hot Spring-based Sky Clean was washing windows and fell outside the Sammons wing of the inn, Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa president and CEO Craig Madison said. The woman landed on a grassy surface and was responsive and answering questions while en route to Mission Hospital. It wasn’t immediately known what caused the woman to fall. Sky Clean could not immediately be reached for comment. The windows are routinely cleaned at Grove Park once a month, Madison said. In his more than 30 years at the inn, Madison said he could not recall an accident like this.

SEATTLE - The employer of a window washer who survived an eight-story plunge from a downtown building says he's thankful the safety systems worked, saving the worker's life. "It couldn't have been any closer, so ... everything else aside, I'm 100 percent thankful," says Kevin Hansen (pictured -click for video), who owns window-washing company Morris-Hansen Enterprises. In an exclusive interview with Komo News, Hansen said he was in Bellevue when he got the call Thursday that one of his men had a fall. "You're basically just blank," he says. "You're hoping that it's a fall, somebody's up on their safety, you hope it's just a fall." And what a fall it was.
Witnesses said window washer Eduardo Lozada Castillo was screaming as he fell eight stories or more, smashing part-way through a window before continuing his fall down the side of the building toward the alleyway below. Surveillance camera footage shows his safety rope catching at the last possible instant, preventing Lozada from smashing bodily into the brick pavement. "We heard some yelling. We looked over at the window, we saw a body coming through the seventh-floor window and then he ... continued to fall," said eyewitness Robert Kleppen.
Kleppen said he thought Lozada was killed in the fall, not realizing that his safety harness stopped him inches from certain death. As it turns out, the window washer suffered only a broken pinky finger. He was taken away by ambulance and checked out at the hospital, just in case. "It's very dramatic, but the systems that they use, worked," Hansen says. Hansen says the company still hasn't figured out exactly what happened up there to cause Lozada to fall. But he says all the safety precautions were in place, and it doesn't appear Lozada did anything wrong.
In all his years in the business, Hansen says, he's never seen a fall like this. And he hopes never to see one again. Lozada was expected to return to work today - but decided he was simply too sore. His boss tells us he's now scheduled to be back on the job on Monday. Yesterdays Front Page.