NY Rescue.. Sort Of

Two window washers are stuck on a scaffold near the top of a Manhattan high-rise building in New York. The workers became trapped near the 62nd floor of the building at West 54th Street and Broadway. Firefighters later cut a hole in a glass window and safely removed the workers from the scaffold.

Firefighters Rescue Window Washers Trapped Outside 65th Floor of Manhattan High Rise: A pair of window washers were trapped on their rig more than 60 stories up outside a high-rise hotel in midtown Manhattan for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon, fire officials said. The washers were working outside Marriott's Courtyard New York Manhattan/Times Square hotel at Broadway and West 54th Street when they became stuck outside the 65th floor at about 1:30 p.m, officials said.

Firefighters were called to the scene and they were able to secure the workers with a rope. They then pulled them to safety at about 2:30 p.m. Video from the scene showed firefighters creating a hole in the window near the scaffolding. Several other firefighters could be seen on the roof of the skyscraper, and they were able to use ropes to pull the rig toward the window. The two workers were then pulled inside. 

Louis Merced, a scaffoldng mechanic who helped firefighters with the rescue described the demeanor of the window washers after the harrowing ordeal. "They came off the rig laughing, joking," Merced said. "To them it's not that serious either. They were not hurt."

Merced, who works for the company that manages the scaffolding, said that the men weren't in any real danger and that he had the scaffolding working again before firefighters cut out the window. An electrical issue was blamed for causing the scaffolding to get stuck. Several streets around the building were cordoned off as crews worked. 

Two workers were rescued Tuesday afternoon after their scaffold stalled outside a Midtown high-rise building. The workers, became stuck outside the 62nd floor of 1717 Broadway, between West 54th and 55th streets, when the scaffolding stopped working around 1:20 p.m. Firefighters said the scaffold was stabilized with fire department ropes, but since mechanics couldn't get the scaffolding moving again, the FDNY had to cut through a pane of glass in order bring the workers inside.

No injuries were reported, and the entire incident lasted just over an hour. Tom Dembinski, the workers' supervisor at Permasteelisa Group, said the pair was done for the day and on their way back up to the roof when the scaffolding stalled. "A malfunction on the scaffold," he said. "The scaffold shut down, and they were stuck out there...it's the nature of the beast."

The operator of the scaffold, however, criticized the FDNY response and called firefighters' actions unnecessary. "There was no need for the fire department at all," Louis Merced said. "This was overdone." He said the FDNY acted too quickly and that he already had the scaffold active again after a breaker problem caused the stall. "They were not in danger," he said. "It's not like the scaffold was falling. Nothing happened. There was no problem where they were in danger." There is no word on whether the conditions played any role in the malfunction.

Oklahoma Window Washers Stranded 30 Floors Up

An electrical malfunction kept window washers stuck for about an hour.

Window Washers Get Stuck 30+ Floors Up On Williams Tower (TULSA, Oklahoma) Two window washers were stuck on a platform at least 30 floors up on the side of downtown Tulsa's Williams Tower. One of the men was Danny Ridge, who says he works for Budget Glass. Ridge told News On 6 the machine on top of the building that raises and lowers the window washing platform lost power in its lifting mechanism. He said he wasn't sure which floor the platform was on when it got stuck, but he estimated it to be the 34th."I tried to count," Ridge said. "I think we were like 33 or 34 floors or so."

Ridge calmly explained the situation from 34 floors up - on live TV - and again, when his feet were on solid ground. "We had a little electrical problem with a scaffold system on the Williams tower today. It shut down while we were on the side of the building, oh I guess about two hours." After more than an hour in the 90 degree weather, the men were able to raise the platform to the roof. Ridge said that despite the heat, he can keep a cool head because even up there, there's always an escape.

Ridge said it was not the first time he's been stuck up there and doesn't expect it to be the last.

"You know, a lot of times they have to let you down manually from the roof, and you kind of don't have anything to do with it, and that can be a little irritating. Yeah, I like to be in control," he said. Turns out a single wire was unplugged inside the rig, but even after the engineers figured that out - how to fix it proved to be a foreign concept. "It's a German rig, so a lot of the stuff is in German, so we had to find the English version," he said.

Ridge said what is crystal clear, after 33 years with the same gig - no matter who makes the rig, window washers will never get used to hanging out that high. "I've broken a window before and climbed in, in the past, but I didn't want to do that," he said. "It just kind of comes along with the job." The company Danny works for, Budget Glass, didn't want to issue a statement. They did give him the rest of the day off - but tomorrow they will return to Williams to finish washing the windows.