Window Washer Fall & Rescue Chicago

Companies arrived to find a window washer that had been working over a steel grate that covered the space. An angle iron which supported one side of the grate gave way sending the worker down into the hole.

Window washer falls in Deerfield: A window washer fell about 20 feet through an iron grate to the concrete floor. He was washing windows and stepped on the iron grate which gave way and caused him to fall into the concrete vault.

Firefighters rescue window washer in Deerfield: A window washer who suffered serious injuries after falling into a deep hole in Deerfield Tuesday was rescued by firefighters who raised him out in a rescue basket, officials said. The 47-year-old man was washing windows at the Arbor Lake Centre office building at 1751 Lake Cook Road when he stepped on a grate that gave way, causing him to fall into a 20-foot-deep ventilation shaft, according to a news release from the Northbrook Fire Department. Although the man was conscious and alert, he suffered multiple injuries.

Rescue workers lowered a ladder down to treat the worker, and removed broken grates blocking the 3-foot-wide shaft. Because the 3-foot-wide shaft was too narrow to carry the worker out, a technical rescue team with members from various fire departments used a special hook, rope and pulley system to lower a rescue basket into the shaft and lift the patient out, the release stated. Paramedics then took the worker to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Deerfield Police are investigating the incident. 

Northbrook technical rescue: Northbrook units were called to 1751 W. Lake Cook Road in Deerfield before 11AM today for a worker that had fallen 15 feet into a concrete well alongside a building. Companies arrived to find a window washer that had been working over a steel grate that covered the space. An angle iron which supported one side of the grate gave way sending the worker down into the hole. A TRT response was requested. Firefighters in the hole stabilized the patient and packaged him in a stokes basket while rope techs setup rigging to hoist him to ground level.

Northbrook Tower 12 is over the concrete well where the worker fell.

A ladder is placed over the hole for the team.

The ladder is secured in place.

Firefighters on the ground provide equipment to the firefighters working with the patient.

The stokes is pulled up from the hole.

The angle iron supporting the grate broke free from this ledge.

A view into the area where the worker fell.

The Lost Art Of Window Gazing

Play School was a British children's television series produced by the BBC which ran from 21 April 1964 until 11 March 1988. The opening sequence for Play School during its run, the first being "Here's a house, here's a door. Windows: 1 2 3 4, ready to knock? Turn the lock - It's Play School." Many older window cleaners will remember the long running series & featured in the story below by John Holton.

Between Here & Home: The lost art of window gazing (By John Holton) - I stumbled across my old school reports in the filing cabinet the other day, including one from my Year 8 science teacher, who wrote, “…if John spent as much time attending to his work as he does staring out of the window, he could achieve anything”.  Sorry Mr Campbell. It wasn’t your fault. My gaze has always been drawn to the hole in the wall. I was the kid mesmerised by the arched window on Play School.

There’s still nothing quite like sitting in the window of my favourite café, sipping tea as life goes on around me; travelling by train with my nose pressed against the glass, the world blurring; wandering the streets of any town at night; the glow emanating from windows; lives playing out behind glass. It’s hard to believe, amid our cities of steel and glass, that window glazing has only been the norm, for the working classes, since the mid-19th century.

Though in 1696 there were enough glazed windows in British homes for William III to introduce a window tax. It made staring out at the world an expensive business and caused some householders to brick up their windows. It seems the aristocracy have always found ways to feather their nests from the necessities of life – air, water… a view. I’m guessing the king’s vista remained unimpeded.

Staring out the window, as Mr Campbell demonstrated, often gets bad press. But some of the world’s most important ideas wouldn’t have happened without some serious window gazing. Literary critic Burton Roscoe said, “Few can ever understand that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window.”

Poet Billy Collins put it more lyrically: The birds are in their trees – the toast is in the toaster – and the poets are at their windows… The clerks are at their desks – the miners are down in their mines – and the poets are looking out their windows… Of course, he’s not just poeticising about poets, but anyone who creates.

Architects, engineers, designers, even scientists, are among history’s most revered window gazers. Indeed, Einstein described his Theory of Relativity with the image of a traveller staring from the window of a moving train.

I was at the launch of Bendigo’s stunning art gallery redevelopment on Saturday, and while all the new spaces are beautifully conceived, the Frances & Harold Abbott Foundation Gallery in particular captured my imagination. It has a spectacular, high corner window that looks upon a stone wall and the trees of Rosalind Park; there are glimpses of Peter (the rabbit sculpture) and, if you look at the right angle, eerie reflections of passers-by. It shares its space with the work of Del Kathryn Barton and Patricia Piccinini, but that window is a work of art without peer.

It’s a perfect view of our changing city. I know I’ll stare from it often.