Window Washing Is A Terrifying Gig

A scaffold malfunction left two window washers dangling 69 stories high at One World Trade Center.

Window Washing Is A Terrifying Gig: A Brief History - Cleaning windows in New York City is a tough, thankless, and, quite frankly, terrifying job. The city saw that last week when window washers Juan Lopez and Juan Lizama found themselves trapped on a dangling scaffold outside the 68th floor of 1 World Trade Center. For more than 90 minutes, the two were suspended hundreds of feet in the air outside of the tallest building in North America, to the horror of onlookers below, before they were rescued by members of the FDNY and Port Authority police department.

It was a terrifying sight, but both men were uninjured. Given the danger inherent to the work of high-rise window washers, instances like this one aren't uncommon. In 2011 alone, eight building cleaning workers were killed on the job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Six of them were window washers. But this isn't a new phenomenon, either. Window washing has a history of being a fatal occupation:

Workers, using a scaffold, replace a window at 1 World Trade in New York, the day after two window washers were rescued from a dangling scaffold by firefighters who cut through the pane to reach them.

May 1961: Harlem's Alvarez Simmonds was washing the windows on an apartment building on 419 West 34th Street when his strap broke. He fell eleven floors to the ground and was killed.

December 1961: John Dungee, who had been cleaning the windows of Maimonides Hospital in Borough Park, Brooklyn fell to his death while he worked on a ledge on the fourth floor. Police said he had not properly worn his safety gear.

February 1980: Getting from one window to the next was a risky maneuver for Queens's Frank Makosiej, 42. He was 15 floors above 57th Street and Park Avenue when his safety strap failed, sending him to the ground. Miraculously, he survived and only injured his left ankle.

August 1996: Scaffolding at the Herald Square Building on 36th Street and Broadway collapsed, killing one worker and injuring another. From the New York Times:  Pedro Ricardo Oblitas, 37, of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who was cleaning decorative window mullions, died after stones and bricks struck him in the head and upper body. A co-worker, Augusto Malaspina, 25, was seriously injured by the debris. And Francia Lopez, 44, a garment center saleswoman from the Bronx, managed to push her 9-year-old daughter, Luissanna, out of the way before the falling bricks hit her back and leg.

The company that hired the workers, Supreme Building Maintenance, would be later be sued for the faulty scaffolding.

July 1998: Just two years later, another malfunctioning scaffolding owned by Supreme Building Maintenance was the cause of a deadly accident -- this time next to the Lincoln Center. Francisco Vega, 40, was killed after two tons of scaffolding collapsed and pulled him down with it. A father of two, Vega had moved to the Bronx from Puerto Rico when he was young. He fell face-first onto the 65th Street sidewalk, where he had been washing windows only seven floors above.

November 2003: Brooklyn's Alexander Hemsley was wetting down the window of a Chelsea loft and reaching for a squeegee when his safety belt snapped. Hemsley, 48, fell 12 floors and was killed.

May 2005: Joel Gillum, a self-employed window washer, was still working at 68 years old when his harness snapped while he was working on the ninth floor of 430 East 57th Street. Gillum was rushed to Columbia-Presbyterian hospital where he died hours later.

August 2007: Cousins Robert Fabrizio, 35, and Darin Fabrizio, 37, were working across the street from Ground Zero at the World Financial Center when their cherry picker, or the boom lift that brought them up to the windows they were washing, tipped over and threw them into the air. They both fell about 40 feet to their deaths.

December 2007: Just a month before Christmas, brothers Alcides and Edgar Moreno fell 47 stories from Solow Tower at 265 East 66th Street while they were washing windows. The fall killed Edgar. Alcides, miraculously, survived after multiple operations, 24 units of blood, 19 units of plasma, and a year of rehab.

From the New York Times:  After the accident, another family member who is also a window washer, Jose Cumbicos, said they had mentioned their misgivings in a telephone call that morning. Mr. Cumbicos also said that the Morenos' supervisor had reassured them, saying a mechanical problem with their rig had been taken care of.

Even with worker's compensation, the surviving Moreno's hospital bill was expected to run into the millions. He settled a multimillion dollar suit with the company that makes the scaffolding that broke in the accident. He and his family now live in Arizona.

November 2008: When the safety hooks failed on Robert Domaszowec's harness, he fell to his death from the 12th floor at 40 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Domaszowec, then 49, had grown up in Williamsburg before moving upstate with his family. The day before he died, he drove his daughter to Ithaca College, according to the Daily News.

November 2010: Two window washers on Long Island narrowly survived electrocution after a pole they were using was pushed by a gust of wind into nearby electric cables. Alan Weinberg and Nicholas Genovese of Staten Island were both rushed to Nassau University Medical Center. They had third-degree burns from the 33,000 volts of electricity that had coursed through their bodies.

From the Daily News: "I thought he was dead," said Genovese's wife, Joann, who got a call from Nassau County police soon after the pair were hit with the 33,000-volt shock. "I screamed and woke up my kids," the 51-year-old said. Genovese was taken to Nassau University Medical Center and treated for third-degree burns on his hands and feet. "I'm just thankful he's alive, and he's fine," said his wife, the mother of his two teenage daughters.

So.... Why do people still do this dangerous work?

"It's a wonderful business," said Juan Lopez, the to CBS New York. "I would recommend it to anyone, as crazy as it sounds." Lopez, who, along with Lizama is part of the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, says the reason he's still alive is because of his rigorous union safety program -- union window-washers are required to do 800 hours of training. And the numbers back him up. According to a union rep, more than 70 non-union window washers died on the job between 2008 and 1983; three unionized window washers died in that same time frame.

About 600 window washers are unionized in New York City. They receive full benefits and are paid as much as nearly $27 an hour. As for the window washers involved in last week's ordeal? Lizama said if he were asked to return to 1 World Trade Center, he would -- "tomorrow." Lopez? Not so much. "There are a lot of ground-floor jobs" with the company, he said, "and I will probably do that."

The WTC window-washer scare was responsible for a 2007 fatal accident. The same scaffolding firm behind last weeks near tragedy at the Freedom Tower was responsible for a fatal 2007 Midtown accident that sent two window washers plunging 47 stories... Tractel. Click to enlarge.

What We Can Learn From The World Trade Center Window Washers: When the news broke last Wednesday that window washers Juan Lopez and Juan Lizama were dangling on their malfunctioning scaffold outside the 68th floor of One World Trade Center, New Yorkers held their breath. We looked skyward along an all too familiar path; oh no, why is this happening on the skin of this particular building? Happily, this time the story ended with nothing worse than a hole in a window.

Because the story caught on across media outlets as different as the Wall Street Journal and NPR, you probably know what happened. Coverage has included everything from Lopez and Lizama’s courage to the sophisticated excellence of New York’s Fire Department all the way to the limits of robotic washer systems. Left relatively unexplored, however, has been why did the story end this way, how come it ended with the best of all possible outcomes. I’d like to suggest the answer has lessons for all of us, even those who prefer to keep both feet much closer to the ground.

Lopez and Lizama daily faced a situation of risk characterized by both low probability and high (disasterous) consequence. Feedback is key. Sure, they washed the windows and saw them clean. But they got no feedback for their daily safety precautions. The value remained theoretical. In short, they were primed to habituate to the possibility of scaffold malfunction with resulting boredom and sloppiness concerning safety procedures.

But good training and attention to detail kept them anchored to their scaffold. Their tools remained tethered there as well thereby preventing squeegees and buckets from becoming missiles plummeting 68 stories endangering unsuspecting pedestrians going about their business. Rather than habituating to routines they handled low probability and disastrous consequence by remaining vigilant about the necessary safety procedures. 

Rescue: The FDNY shared this photo from inside the building as they decided on the best method to safely get the washers inside. Click to enlarge.