The $4.5 Million Window Cleaning Job

Workers refurbish the panes of glass on the roof of Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove on Wednesday. The church, formerly known as Crystal Cathedral, is under going a year-long rehab that includes replaces the moulding between the glass and adding a new coating to the outside. The interior is also being completely remodeled.

What it takes to clean and repair Christ Cathedral's 10,000 glass panes (Garden Grove, Orange County, California): – A $4.5 million project to repair Christ Cathedral’s 10,000 glass window panes started Wednesday, a year-long effort that must happen before construction on the interior – to make the church more traditionally Catholic – can begin. The project is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange’s renovation of the 78,000-square-foot, all-glass structure previously known as the Crystal Cathedral and made famous by the late Rev. Robert Schuller, who died last year.

“It’s the first major visible step,” said Ryan Lilyengren, spokesman for the diocese, which is now headquartered at the 35-acre campus. “People will be excited about it.” A 15-story, 300-ton crane was brought in to do the work. On Tuesday, a three-man crew rode the crane’s bucket to the northeast slope of the cathedral to plan how they should approach the repairs. “We’re excited to finally get this thing started,” Mike Prestridge, vice president of contractor Century Building Solutions, said about working on the iconic building. “This is a thrill for us.”

Christ Cathedral’s 10,000 glass window panes started Wednesday, a year-long effort.

The workers will replace broken panes. But for most, they will clean the glass and use silicone caulking on the seals and metal frames, called mullion, to bolster “the structural integrity,” Prestridge said. The initial estimate, he said, calls for six panes to be repaired per person, per day. Within three to four weeks, additional lifts will arrive to repair the frames on the sides of the building. “Once it’s ramped up, up to 12 people will be working, not counting the crane operators,” Prestridge said.

After the frames are reinforced, the windows will get a special coating to make them shine brighter. “It still shines, but it’s more than 30 years old,” Lilyengren said of the former Crystal Cathedral, completed in 1981. “This will make it even brighter.” Since buying the campus for $57.5 million in 2012, the diocese has invested heavily in upgrades, spending $6.1 million to renovate the 13-story Tower of Hope and $2 million to repair the 16,000-pipe Hazel Wright Organ, which is about 90 percent complete.

The diocese could end up spending $113 million total to renovate the entire campus. Included in that is a $29 million allocation for renovating the main cathedral building, though it will likely cost more than that, Lilyengren said. Many of the cathedral renovations center on transforming the inside into a more traditionally Catholic place of worship.

Also, the interior of the 10,000 window panes will be accentuated with white panels, called petals, that will open at varying degrees and create shade; the petals will help keep the cathedral cool, as well as reduce the lighting – giving it a more somber feel. The petals will also have lights facing outward, creating an effect the design committee calls the Box of Stars, and making the cathedral more visible at night.

Lilyengren said the interior construction, which will take about 20 months, should be done by late 2018. But starting the work will wait until the panes that make up the cathedral’s large arched roof are repaired. “There was a lot of deferred maintenance,” Lilyengren said. “The building is not sealed, so the roof does leak.”

Employer Fined $12,000 In Window Washer’s Fall

A 2002 Toyota Camry is crushed after Pedro Perez, a window washer fell 11 stories onto its roof at Montgomery and California streets in San Francisco last November.

In total, there were five citations with proposed penalties of $12,765 issued in this case: three general, one serious and one serious accident related citations. 

A general violation is cited when an accident or illness resulting from the violation of a standard would probably not cause death or serious harm, but would have a direct effect on the health of employees. In contrast, a serious violation is cited when there is a realistic possibility that death or serious physical harm could result from the violation.

In 2008, Cal/OSHA cited Century Window Cleaning $2,720 for four violations, one of which was serious, following a complaint-based investigation.

An investigator take photos of a cable that allegedly snapped, causing a window washer to fall 11 stories onto a moving car at Montgomery and California streets in San Francisco, Calif.

Employer fined $12,000 in window washer’s 11-story fall: The company who employed a window washer who miraculously survived an 11-story fall from a San Francisco office building last year was hit with five citations and more than $12,000 in fines for violations related to the accident, officials announced Wednesday.

Century Window Washing of Concord was cited for “failure to secure the roof with fall protection equipment and inadequate training on the proper use of the victim’s personal fall protection equipment,” officials wrote in a statement, both serious violations of workplace safety regulations.

Pedro Perez, 58, was moving an extension cord around the corner of the building at 400 Montgomery St. around 10 a.m. Nov. 21 when he disconnected the lanyard on his fall protection equipment from an anchor point as he moved toward the edge of the roof. Perez lost his balance and tumbled over the edge, falling roughly 130 feet before landing on the roof of a passing Toyota Camry on the street below.

“At first all I saw was, out of the corner of my eye, a blue streak falling,” said retired Army Col. Sam Hartwell, a banker who witnessed the fall. “Then I heard that loud crash, the shattering glass and a thud. It wasn’t until the man rolled over onto the pavement and landed on his back that I realized it was a person.”

Passersby rushed to his aid, and he was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with serious brain trauma, a shattered pelvis and a broken arm. The driver of the car, Mohammad Alcozai of Dublin, got out almost immediately after the impact. The victim hit the roof and back window of the 2002 four-door Camry, totaling the car. A split-second difference in timing and the worker might have landed on the windshield, with potentially terrible consequences for Alcozai.

“It was a miracle,” Alcozai told The Chronicle the day of the accident. “While it is miraculous that this man survived a fall from this height, his fall is an essential reminder that employers are required to provide protections from the hazards of high elevation work,” said Christine Baker, director of the Department of Industrial Relations, a Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA.

Of the five violations Century Window Cleaning was cited for — with fines totaling $12,765 — three were general and two were considered serious, according to Cal/OSHA. The company was cited by regulators once before in 2008 for four violations totaling $2,270 in a complaint-based investigation.

A woman who answered the phone at the company said they would not be commenting on the citations, which can be appealed.

In the days after the accident, Perez’s wife Maricela said, “It was surgery after surgery. The doctors induced a coma because the suffering was so great. Truly, it is a miracle that he is still alive.” When he finally woke up, Perez wasn’t able to speak, his family said. He didn’t remember the fall, nor could he recognize familiar faces. Because he was unable to work, Maricela was forced to work extra hours and his 19-year-old daughter, Monica, stopped going to school so she could pick up an extra job.

The family set up a GoFundMe site and — through more than 1,200 individual donations — was able to raise more than $80,000, more than quadrupling their original goal of $20,000. “Thanks to all the donations we have gotten in these past days, it will be possible not only for me to go back to school in the summer,” Monica Perez wrote on the fundraising page around New Year’s. “But it also gives my father a piece of mind to know that we won’t have to struggle any longer with the bills.” A union representative who has been in contact with the family said they would not be making any statements to the media.

A Redwood City window washing company was hit with $12,765 in penalties Wednesday for five safety hazards that led to a worker plummeting 11 stories in San Francisco’s Financial District late last year, according to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Cal/OSHA announced its investigation into Century Window Cleaning ended with five citations, including two serious citations, along with the proposed penalty. Century has the opportunity to appeal the citations.

Cal/OSHA found the company had failed to secure the roof with fall protection equipment and provided inadequate training for using the equipment. It’s not the first time the company was cited. Complaints against the company led to penalties of $2,720 for violations in 2008, according to Cal/OSHA. “While it is miraculous that this man survived a fall from this height, his fall is an essential reminder that employers are required to provide protections from the hazards of high elevation work,” state Department of Industrial Relations Director Christine Baker said in a statement.