Harness Saves Window Cleaner

 Crews from Dick's Towing prepare to upright a tipped boom lift Sunday morning on Washington Avenue outside the Ottawa County Courthouse.

Harness saves man from injury: Grand Haven: A Spring Lake man’s harness kept him from being tossed onto the street below when his lift vehicle tipped over Sunday morning, said Lt. Renee Freeman of the Grand Haven Department of Public Safety. Gregory VanCleave had been cleaning windows on the third floor of the Ottawa County Courthouse, when the incident occurred about 8:35 a.m. The man, who was working for Fish Window Cleaning, had just started to lower the lift when the wheels began to sink in the ground, Freeman said. VanCleave was partially thrown from the bucket, was saved by his harness, but was still hanging 15-20 feet from the ground when police arrived, she said. Police used the aerial fire truck to reach the man and bring him into the bucket, Freeman said. He was not injured and refused treatment at the scene. Dick’s Towing brought two vehicles to the scene to upright the lift. 

Doug Collison, owner of the local Fish Window Cleaning franchise, said he was very relieved that the harness worked. “Our employees and our customers are very valuable to us,” he said. The owner said in the seven years they have been in business, they have probably performed 50,000 cleans and “we’ve never even come close to having an employee hurt,” he said. Collison said the company is very big on safety. “We have a training program and we have weekly safety meetings,” he said. Collison said the company they rent the boom lift from would be doing an investigation to determine if the tires of the lift sank into the ground or if they became soft.

Harness proves a life saver in Michigan: A man’s harness saved his life on Sunday when his boom lift went over in the town of Grand Haven, Michigan. Gregory VanCleave was employed by Fish Window Cleaning to clean the windows of the Ottawa County Courthouse. He was working on the third floor windows, using the large articulated boom lift, when the wheels on one side began to sink into the ground. The machine overturned catapulting VanCleave from the basket as the articulation knuckle hit the ground. Fortunately he was wearing a full harness and lanyard and was left dangling from the boom around five to six metres above the ground.
 

Vertikal Comment: Boom lifts rarely tip over and when they do it is almost always due to operator error and all too often down to ground conditions. How otherwise intelligent people can imagine that a grassed area around an old building will safely support a 10 to 15 tonne lift is a mystery. You would think that the delivery driver dropping the machine off might say “I hope you don’t think you are taking this onto that lawn?” Or that basic training for users would stress ground conditions … almost above all other issues? At least the man was wearing a harness, shame his lanyard was not just a little shorter so that he could have avoided dangling and the risk of suspension trauma. But at least it looks as though he escaped unhurt and once again proved the benefits of wearing a harness in a boom lift.