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| 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. |
Companies fined over window cleaner's fall: Two companies found to be responsible for a teenage window cleaner falling four storeys have been sentenced in Auckland District Court. Louisa Kuypers, 18, plunged 30 metres while scaling an office building in the Auckland suburb of Newmarket
last year. The company she worked for - At Height Ltd - was today fined $9,000 while the company it contracted to - Building Wash Services - was fined more than $20,000.
Judge Emma Aitken said At Height Ltd was more responsible for the accident and originally allocated it a fine of more than $46,000. However, the fine was discounted as Aitken said the fine would effectively bankrupt the company. The 18-year-old made what doctors describe as a remarkable recovery after falling from the top of the Lion Breweries building. An emergency department clinician who helped save Kuypers said he believes wearing a helmet "helped immensely". Kuypers received compensation of $40,000 for the debilitating injuries she sustained during the fall. "Anything's fine. I wasn't really expecting to see more than $5000 so I'm quite happy with it," she said outside court.
Kuypers said her fall was "just an accident". "I was friends with all those guys and I didn't want to see them go down and I didn't want to see the company get hurt. In fact if I'd had it my way nothing would have happened. She is aiming to train as a nurse.
Thrill-seeking teen: For the thrill-seeking teen 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 Kuypers 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." He still wants answers about how the accident happened.
Previous stories here.
Two companies have been fined almost $30,000 and ordered to pay $40,000 in reparation after an abseiling window cleaner suffered serious injuries in a 15-metre fall. The 18-year-old woman, who was employed by At Height Limited, was lucky to survive the fall from the Lion House building in Newmarket in February last year, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) said. The company was sentenced alongside Building Wash Services, which had contracted it for the work, in Auckland District Court on Friday.
The court was told that the victim was told to attach her sling and ropes to air-conditioning ducting brackets on the roof of the building - but the brackets were not fixed to the roof. In the fall, she suffered fractures to her skull, face, collarbone, lower legs and neck, and pulmonary contusions and lacerations to her liver. She spent nearly a fortnight in hospital.
Sentencing the company on Friday, Judge Emma Aitken said the appropriate starting point for a fine was $100,000. However, taking into account At Height's limited finances and other discounts, she reduced the fine to $9000, and ordered it to pay $32,000 to the injured worker. Building Wash Services was fined $20,800 and ordered to pay $8000 in reparation. Both companies had earlier pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety in Employment Act.
In a startling workplace accident earlier this year Louisa Kuypers, 18, fell from a 30-meter height while abseiling as part of her job, industrial window cleaning. Kuypers was washing windows at Lion Nathan offices in New Market, Auckland when she fell and realised immediately that something was wrong when she launched off the roof. The rope, usually meant to tighten up, kept releasing, letting her fall four stories onto concrete. She was taken to Auckland City Hospital’s intensive care unit unconscious and suffering from five dislocated ribs, a fractured eye socket and broken bones in her neck, ankle, shoulder and collarbone. Kuypers was lucky to survive the fall, and is especially lucky she isn’t permanently impaired by her injuries. She was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, likely saving her from brain injury.
The building she was working on didn’t have the eyebolts that are usually used to thread abseiling ropes through so another form of anchorage was used. Kuypers said of her co-worker, a more experience rope-access worker, “[He] isn’t coping too well. There’s no blame, but he blames himself”. Rope Access Industry standards require two forms of anchorage to be used in this type of work, in case the first anchor fails. In a compliant set-up both anchors would have had to fail – in Kuyper’s case bystanders said only one metal anchor had fallen from the roof with her. The cause of the accident is still being investigated; this accident was the third of its kind in eight months in New Zealand.
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| The city distanced itself from the situation saying it wasn’t their employee. “The person in the picture you provided is an employee of Citywide Professional Window Cleaning, contracted to clean the windows of the building.” |
Man on a ledge worries downtown workers (ALBUQUERQUE) - A worker standing on a ledge above the eighth floor at City Hall had people doing double-takes Wednesday. That is because by all appearances he wasn’t wearing a harness. The man was rigging up a platform to clean the windows on a high-rise 107 feet up. Now investigators want to know if he was wearing anything to keep him from plummeting to his death. The city distanced itself from the situation saying it wasn’t their employee. “The person in the picture you provided is an employee of Citywide Professional Window Cleaning, contracted to clean the windows of the building,” said Breanna Anderson, deputy communications director for the city of Albuquerque. “As such, the city is not liable.”
The owner of Citywide Professional Window Cleaning told KRQE News 13 the employee was wearing a harness. He called it a half harness and said it went around the waist and thighs. A photo was sent to KRQE News 13 that appeared to show a worker with nothing around his thighs. That’s when the company declined to comment further. Now OSHA , the government agency in charge of investigating workplace safety issues, is looking into the matter. “The photo that was provided to us indicated the potential for a high gravity hazard. A fall from that height would obviously be very severe,” said Bob Genoway, bureau chief for New Mexico OSHA. OSHA says it is possible the city is not off the hook. “When OSHA does inspections, we look at all employers on site to determine who has responsibility for different aspects of safety,” Genoway said. Multiple sources say the city’s risk management group has already met with the window cleaning company. OSHA says if it finds wrongdoing, the penalties can be up to $70,000 per violation.
Life Falling Through the Cracks: An employee of the Greek Parliament hangs after falling through the glass roof over the Greek Parliament Hall, in her efforts to prevent rain water from entering the building, in Athens, Greece, on Feb. 22. A heavy storm of rain and sleet in the greater Athens region created problems with transportation, flooding streets and interrupting sea transport.
