The NZ Window Washer Who Survived

Giant fall but she's fearless: The teenager who miraculously survived a 30m fall on to concrete can't wait to get back into abseiling. For the first time, 18-year-old Louisa Kuypers, a window washer, has spoken about what happened last Friday afternoon, after she launched herself off the roof of an office building in Auckland's Newmarket. "The rope was meant to stretch then tighten up, but I could feel it had gone further. "I don't remember the fall exactly, but apparently people in the office heard me scream."

Unconscious, Kuypers was rushed to Auckland City Hospital's intensive care unit. She had five dislocated ribs, a hairline fracture in her eye socket and broken bones in her neck, ankle, shoulder and collarbone. "There's a pretty small chance of surviving a fall from that height," Kuypers said from her hospital bed yesterday. The roof did not have "eye bolts" where the abseiling ropes would usually be attached, she said. "The guy I was working with isn't coping too well. There's no blame, but he blames himself."

It was the second miraculous escape from abseiling in three months. Mikaela Blayney, 20, fell from the Event Cinema building in Aotea Square in December during an acrobatic performance. But both Blayney and Kuypers said they planned to get back into abseiling. "We're always outside, always abseiling. I want to get back to work," Kuypers said.

Broken Back, Ribs, Ankle, Collarbone, Bruising & A Punctured Lung

Abseiler remembers 'quick drop' - The 18-year-old abseiling window-cleaner who fell four storeys remembers a sense of weightlessness as she plummeted about 30m to the ground. Louisa Kuypers was taken to Auckland City Hospital in a critical condition after falling from the roof of a Lion Breweries building in Newmarket around 2.30pm on Friday. Her condition has since improved to stable, although she remains in hospital with injuries including a broken back, ribs, ankle, collarbone, deep bruising and a punctured lung.

Initial CT scans indicated Ms Kuypers had not suffered brain injuries, and medical experts have labelled her survival extraordinary. Her father, Gilbert Kuypers, spent yesterday morning at the hospital and said because of pain medication his daughter was drowsy and still trying to come to terms with the accident. "She remembered that she just fell off, and it was just a quick drop, and she only remembers the weightlessness feeling of it, and that was the end of it. She just went blank after that."

Ms Kuypers' colleague had just completed an abseil drop, and when she got over the side of the building and put her weight on the equipment, "the whole lot let go". Mr Kuypers said, "I'm very confident when she finally gets a bit more out of the pain management that she will be able to recall more of what's happened." He said only a couple of weeks ago she had to be rescued after a piece of her gear malfunctioned and she became stuck mid-abseil.

Since then she had used brand-new equipment, so Mr Kuypers felt the fall was unlikely to have been caused by a gear malfunction. "Maybe the procedures weren't done properly ... the only thing we can say is something obviously has gone wrong. "Whether it's a systematic error, or a gear failure ..." A witness to the accident told the Herald a metal anchor which attached Ms Kuypers to the building fell to the ground with her. The Department of Labour is investigating with the help of Ms Kuypers' employers, At Height, who could not be reached for comment yesterday. 

The accident is the third industrial-rope accident in eight months. A Wellington window washer fell from a building last June and a woman abseiling performance artist plunged 14m down a wall in Auckland's Aotea Square in December. Mr Kuypers said he would be encouraging his daughter to find a new career. But he said she was naturally adventurous and credited her fitness from activities such as kayaking and motocross as helping to save her life. "She's been over the Huka Falls [kayaking] already, twice. So she pushes it a bit." Ms Kuypers has also landed small parts in television shows including Shortland Street and Go Girls.

Her father said he would eventually visit the Lion building to see just how far Ms Kuypers had fallen, but was amazed she had survived the plunge. "There must be a lot of angels out there. And I'm sure they work hard." St John medical director Tony Smith said for Ms Kuypers to survive a four-storey fall was extraordinary. He said sometimes a harness could slow a fall down, as opposed to an unsupported free fall. "I don't know whether that was the case or not, but we can say that her survival in terms of the height she fell was extraordinary. And she's a very, very lucky young woman."

Dr Smith said the fact that Ms Kuypers fell in a way that protected her head from major injury was crucial. An American study of 200 falls showed a person is just as likely to survive a five-storey fall landing feet-first as they are a one-storey fall head-first. A New York doctor who had dealt with a high number of falls said in 2008 that the death rate from a three-storey fall was about 50 per cent.

Dad wants answers over window cleaning accident: The father of a teenage window cleaner who survived a four-storey fall wants answers on how the accident happened. Louisa Kuypers plunged 30 metres while scaling an office building in the Auckland suburb of Newmarket. For the thrill-seeking 18-year-old abseil window-washing was a natural career choice and her father Gilbert Kuypers told ONE News she was so happy in the job she "would have done it almost for nothing".

But Gilbert worried about his daughter's safety. "I just dropped her off before the accident and I said, you know, be careful. And she's 'oh yeah, always do that'. And all of a sudden, bang, you know, she's in hospital, and all we're looking at is just a nose and a pair of eyes sticking out of bandages." After falling from the top of the Lion Breweries building on Friday, the teen is making a remarkable recovery. She is in a stable condition, and talking. But her dad still wants answers about how the accident happened. He says Louisa was working with another window washer at the time of the accident - a more experienced man.

"If the person is senior he should know stuff and if he isn't then he should have been trained. Somewhere, something isn't quite right," Gilbert said. Louisa's employer, a company called At Height, has not responded to calls from ONE New. The Labour Department is investigating the accident - the third industrial rope fall in just eight months, although none were fatal. An emergency department clinician who helped save Louisa says hers is a remarkable case and he believes wearing a helmet "helped immensely". "I don't recall seeing anyone who's fallen quite so far and who has come out so relatively unscathed," Dr Mike Nichols said. It may be another six months before the cause of the accident is fully known.

Man seriously injured after roof fall: A man has been taken to hospital in a serious condition after he fell through the roof of a building early this morning. The man, who is around 20-years-old, fell through the roof behind the Dick Smith building on Karangahape Rd in Ponsonby. Auckland Central acting inspector Danny Meade said one police car was sent to the incident at 4.42am. ''We had been sent by ambulance after a man had fallen through the roof of a building behind the Dick Smith building,'' he said. It is unclear what the man was doing on top of the building. Meanwhile, an Auckland woman who fell 30m while suspended off the side of the Lion Nathan Building in Newmarket earlier this week is in a stable condition. Louisa Kuypers, 18, was abseiling down the building on Carlton Gore Rd when the metal anchor she was attached to is believed to have broken off, sending her plummeting three storeys. The window cleaner was taken to Auckland City Hospital in a critical condition.

Fridays Window Cleaning News

Bogus window cleaners take jewels in raid: A PAIR of crooks disguised themselves as window cleaners to steal more than £2,000 of jewellery from under the nose of an unsuspecting nanny. The duo knocked on the door of a house in Poets Road, Highbury, at about 3pm on Friday and told the au pair they had an appointment. They were in workman's overalls and carrying ladders so let one of them go upstairs to "check whether the windows needed cleaning inside or out". The au pair became suspicious and telephoned the owner of the house, a mother-of-three who was on a trip to the Islington Vue cinema in Upper Street. The mum told her nanny there was no such appointment and came rushing home - but the bogus workmen had already gone. And with them they had taken a selection of the mother's most expensive jewellery, including, gold, diamonds and pearls.
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Wiltshire householders scammed by "window cleaners": HOUSEHOLDERS in Wiltshire are falling victim to a window cleaning scam. Tricksters have called at homes in Swindon and Chippenham offering to clean windows but demanding payment up front. Although they provide receipts they fail to carry out the job and contact details on the receipts are false. Police spokeswoman Claire Usher said: "We are appealing for anyone who believes they have been a victim of this situation and has not yet contacted police to do so." Anybody with information should call 0845 4087000.
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California siblings charged with killing B.C. businessman: A brother and sister from California, charged this week with the 2007 murder of Tsawwassen businessman William George Dobbs, may face the death penalty. Robert Lee Dunson, 27, and Jackie Lynn Dunson, 32, were charged Tuesday in the U.S. "We've charged both with murder and we've alleged that the murder was committed during the commission of a robbery. In California that is a charge that makes the defendant eligible for the death penalty," said Michael Jeandron, spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney's office. Dobbs, 48, was found beaten to death by the side of a desert road near the town of Indio, in southern California near Palm Springs on Nov. 27, 2007. Dobbs (pictured) ran a window cleaning and janitorial service called Excelsior Buildings Maintenance, which had been in the family since 1910. The wealthy businessman was remembered as a generous, funny man. "He was always happy, the life of the party," stepdaughter Morgan Dawson told The Province in 2007.
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Padiham man 'sent home from hospital with broken back: Mr Johnson said: “I was riding my motorbike near my home when I hit the kerb and came off. “My back was really hurting, I could hardly breathe and I was screaming in pain.” Mr Johnson, who lives with girlfriend Sonia Grant, 26, and five-year-old daughter Olivia, was given an x-ray by doctors in Blackburn and told he had a broken bone in his spine. “They looked me over, sent me home, told me to do plenty of walking and told me get some rest,” he added. “But then when I went for my appointment at the fracture clinic in Burnley, they told me there were two breaks – one of which they had missed at Blackburn.” Mr Johnson was sent back to hospital for a week before being discharged. But in the meantime, Mr Johnson has been left in crippling pain, wearing a back brace, and not knowing if he will be able to return to work as a window cleaner. He said: “I really don’t know if I will make a full recovery and it is awful not knowing if I will work again.
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Not long after the new Jubilee Line underground station was built at Stratford in east London, construction workers noticed a mysterious film of white grease smearing the building's glass.
Resistant to the usual window cleaners, it baffled Bechtel project managers preparing for the underground station's opening. Eventually, after much head scratching, the substance was traced to a mayonnaise factory nearly two miles away - and a new heavy-duty wash was introduced. That salad dressing could disturb a multibillion-pound infrastructure project is a reminder of the range of unexpected difficulties that can confront project managers on complex civil engineering works.
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Collaboration for a better city: Students from Franklin High School helped clean up downtown Franklin on Thursday by washing windows and vacuuming empty storefronts. The community service effort by about 20 high school volunteers was part of the Collaboration project, started by volunteers from Choose Franklin who wanted to spruce up downtown in advance of Community Day on May 9. Three projects arose from the effort. The first project was to equip each downtown business with a flag to display in front of its store on Central Street. The second project will engage volunteers in a general cleanup of Central Street. The third project involves decorating and improving empty storefronts with artwork and visually pleasing materials to improve the aesthetic quality of the downtown area and have the downtown storefronts look full and beautiful. Pictured: Franklin High Schooler Courtney Hubbard helps out the Collaboration project on Thursday by washing windows in vacant downtown storefronts.
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Twin sisters Chrissy and Kim Conti and Andy Shaw will be cycling from Toronto to Niagara Falls in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, a fundraiser to support the Campbell Family Research Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation. Each cyclist has to raise $2,500 to ride in the event that will take place from June 13-14. The Conti sisters are double trouble – literally. That is what the duo has dubbed itself for the 200-kilometer trek. The 25-year-old Burlington natives have a lifetime of volunteerism under their belt. Their stepfather had two kidney transplants, prompting the girls, at a young age, to canvass their neighbourhood for donations for the Kidney Foundation. When a friend’s mother overcame breast cancer, the girls were motivated to participate in a fundraising walk for the disease. The twins lost two grandparents to cancer, and now a close friend of theirs is battling skin cancer. They say cancer research is an issue close to their hearts. “We’re lucky to be from a family that is able to do these kinds of things,” said Kim. Each participant will be given a T-shirt, and a tent so they can camp out in Hamilton during the two-day ride. The sisters have appealed to family and friends for donations, and so far have raised about $500 each. Kim, who runs a window washing company, says the girls are starting to get creative about their fundraising tactics. “We were thinking of volunteering to clean the windows at a nursing home and maybe ask for donations there.”