Latest Spotlight On Falls From Height

Eric was injured in a fall from a roof while at work on Wednesday July 11th. He has been in ICU for several days with many broken bones and 2 collapsed lungs but is slowly making a recovery.

Benefit fund established for victim of fall (WENATCHEE) — Friends of a Wenatchee window cleaner injured in a severe fall last week seek donations to help his recovery. Eric Opel, owner of Eric’s Affordable Window Service, fell from a Chelan roof July 11 and suffered broken collar bones, ribs, shoulder blades and one arm, as well as collapsed lungs and a fractured lower vertebra. He remained Saturday in intensive care at Central Washington Hospital, in serious but stable condition. Donations to help his family with expenses can be made to the Eric B. Opel Benefit Fund at Cashmere Valley Bank, 1100 Maple Street, Wenatchee, or any Cashmere Valley Bank Branch.

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Illegal maid's garbage-chute escape ends in death - She plunged from 8th floor after trying to escape. An Asian housemaid plunged to her death from the eighth level into the building’s chute in Abu Dhabi after she tried to escape inspectors coming to the apartment for a washing offence, mistaking them for immigration law enforcers. After she heard the knocking on the door, the 28-year-old maid climbed out of the bathroom window, grabbed the sewage pipe and tried to climb down to the ground floor. But she lost her balance and plunged down to death into the chute.

A 28-year-old maid plunged to her death from the eighth floor of a building in Khalidiya area of Abu Dhabi on Saturday.

The inspectors had asked the maid to open the door to hand her a fine for violating Municipality’s laws on hanging the wash on the balcony but she thought they were there to arrest her for absconding from her sponsor. “This incident illustrates a permanent state of fear and anxiety suffered from the offenders of the immigration and labour laws…they just try to escape by any means even through this could cost them their lives,” said Colonel Rashid Mohammed Bursheed, director of the criminal investigation department. Bursheed said preliminary investigation ruled out criminal act but it was not clear whether the maid was on her own in that apartment. “We appeal for all people and establishments not to employ illegal migrants and to shut all doors that will encourage them to stay in the country illegally,” he said.

Mystery behind worker's horror plunge: A 20-year-old construction worker was fighting for his life last night after plunging at least six floors from a central Auckland building - in full view of his colleagues and horrified university students. The man, a contractor for Fletcher Construction, fell while working on the Auckland University of Technology's new 13-storey design and creative technologies building yesterday. Work was suspended at the site as police and Department of Labour investigators examined the scene. One colleague said he couldn't understand how the man could have fallen as he would have had to pass through a barrier to get outside. A witness said it appeared he fell from scaffolding on to a bin full of metal pipes. Students coming to and from class in another building saw the fall, and others heard the man hit the ground. Some onlookers thought he fell from at least the eighth floor, although a St John Ambulance spokesman said it was about the sixth floor.
The site was shut down about 2pm and the 250 workers sent home.

The student initially thought the worker was dead. "They covered him over him completely with jackets and we thought that was the end. No one did any CPR so we were pretty sure it was all over." The man "looked so young". "He was completely grey - all the colour had gone out of him. He had tattoos on his chest and they stood out heaps because he was so white." She said the workers who were first to their injured colleague took off his shirt straight away and then covered him with jackets.

FALL SURVIVORS

February 2012: Window cleaner Louisa Kuypers, 18, fell 30 metres from the roof of the Lion Breweries office building in Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket. She was critically injured.
December 2011: Mikaela Blayney, 20, plunged six storeys during an acrobatic abseiling group's performance above Aotea Square. She broke only her cheekbone.
June 2011: A Wellington window washer fell from the fifth floor of a building and on to a car, only fracturing his big toe.
July 2010: A 15-year-old survived a 50m plunge from a balcony at the Proximity Apartments in Manukau, through a carpark roof on to a concrete floor. The teenager suffered broken bones and internal injuries.
August 2010: A North Shore 18-year-old fell seven storeys during a night of drinking and taking Ecstasy. She suffered breaks in her vertebrae, a punctured lung and three broken ribs.

Alpine Window Cleaning & A Rescue

The Job Picture: Window washer.

Adrian Deines’ new window-cleaning tool is no little squirt. The British-made, carbon-fiber, $3,000 scrub brush — known in the window-washing trade as a water-fed pole — weighs only nine pounds. But get this: it stretches more than six stories high to reach windows that are way, way up. Deines and his crew from Alpine High Window Cleaning used the scrubbing import for the first time this week to reach upper windows at Garden Terrace, a senior apartment complex at Fifth Street and N. Emerson Avenue. Yes, it’s six stories high.

“We wouldn’t have been able to bid on this job if we didn’t have this pole,” said Deines. “The ground in the back isn’t level enough for safe use of a lift or cherry picker. And ladders pose their own safety problems.” Garden Terrace has more than 350 windows that haven’t been cleaned in two years, he said. “So they were really happy we had this thing.” Deines first learned about the pole — the Gardiner Super Max 61, oh yeah — at a window washer convention last winter in St. Petersburg, Fla. More than 500 window washers from around the country gathered (we’re guessing) to test new soaps, attend squeegee seminars and generally rest their arms. “We knew pretty soon that we’d want the 60-footer,” said Deines. “We were excited.”

Fully extended, the pole rests against an upper window while purified water runs up an interior tube to the brush. Before gushing up the pole, regular tap water from the building is run through a purification tank that removes minerals and chlorine that might streak the glass. “At six stories above the ground, you don’t want streaks,” said Deines. “You want clear, beautiful glass.”

SEATTLE - firefighters came to the rescue of a window washer Thursday who was dangling 60 feet above the ground at Seattle Center's McCaw Hall. The man reportedly was cleaning windows on the buildings' top floor Thursday when his supporting ropes slipped. One rescue team deployed to the roof of the building to stabilize the man while a second team extended a ladder to him from a fire truck. The man was able to walk down the ladder safely with the assistance of a firefighter.

Seattle firefighters rescue tangled window washer: A window washer was rescued by Seattle firefighters Thursday after he fell off his seat and dangled from his safety harness about 65 feet above the ground outside McCall Hall at Seattle Center. The man was not injured, but "he's being checked out by a medic unit as we speak," Kyle Moore, spokesman for the Seattle Fire Department, said at 12:17 p.m. The accident was reported at 11:47 a.m. and the Fire Department's technical rescue team responded to the Seattle Center's performance venue, Moore said. The man, who appears to be in his 30s or 40s, was washing windows at the front of the building when he fell off his seat "but his safety line caught him," said Moore, who couldn't say how far the man fell. Firefighters went onto the roof and dropped a rope to keep the man, who was about 15 feet below the roof line, from falling any further, Moore said. Another firefighter then climbed a ladder that was brought to the front of the building and helped the man climb down, he said. "Everything worked properly," Moore said. He said all of the man's equipment was left on the building's roof so that investigators could examine it to determine what went wrong.