For Hire – Laborer By Freelance

FREELANCE LABORER Lopez takes his usual place at the Dollars Corner intersection as he advertises for work.

North County man rejects materialism: He used to own a nice home and make good money. He had his own business with hundreds of clients. But those were the old days. Now Lopez – he goes only by his last name – lives in a cramped travel trailer a mile north of Dollars Corner in what he calls “basically a junkyard.”

The change in lifestyle occurred in 2007, when his window washing business in Portland crashed along with the economy. Lopez said he specialized in high-end jobs, not only washing windows but also taking out and cleaning window screens, and even wiping out the tracks where the windows would slide. “When the economy tanked, people didn’t want to pay for that,” Lopez said.

These days, the 44-year-old man makes a living by doing odd jobs. He’s often seen standing at the Dollars Corner intersection with a big green sign that reads, “For Hire – Laborer by Freelance.” He won’t say how much money he makes, only that “I’m at the poverty level.” The jobs vary. Recently, he helped someone build a carport for their RV. Lopez also has done painting, landscape maintenance, and helped detail a boat at a marina. “I’ve even been paid just to talk to someone,” he said, explaining that he was hired for a job but the “boss” never got around to putting him to work, paying anyway after an enjoyable conversation.

Before finding the travel trailer, Lopez lived in a van for a couple of years. He was proud, though, and didn’t want to look like a homeless man. He showered at YMCAs or other places that had public facilities. “I would always present myself nicely,” he said.

He wanted to work for himself rather than taking a job advertised in the newspaper or by the state employment office. Lopez said working for someone else isn’t his style. “I don’t want to go back to that again,” he said. “After testing the life of a self-made man, it’s an issue of dignity.”

He learned to work hard as a child by helping tend fruit trees on his family’s acreage in northern Washington. Despite his financial setbacks, he chipped away at online community college courses until he acquired an associate degree.

His goal is to acquire bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in technology that will position him for a career in the aerospace industry, particularly space flight. He believes people will eventually repeat the western U.S. migration of the 1800s by establishing colonies on other planets. “One day it will be history all over again,” Lopez said. “Some oppressive government will make people want to leave.”

When that happens, he hopes to have the sophisticated transportation equipment needed to help people start over in outer space. “I am going into the interstellar travel business,” Lopez said, adding that he admires what millionaire recluse Howard Hughes accomplished. “He was a visionary in the first half of his life,’’ he said. “He knew how to put deals together, and came up with a lot of innovative ideas for business and aircraft. I adore Howard Hughes. He was ahead of his time.”

Lopez also wants to establish a business to help other people like him find work. He envisions a network of employers with only a couple of employees who want to hire freelance laborers for odd jobs, just as he is doing. His company’s website has the motto: “Be free, be independent, live well.” His phone number is (503) 708-9947, and he welcomes calls from anyone who wants to hire him or other freelancers for jobs.

Over the years, Lopez said, he has gone through the depression and embarrassment of being unemployed and homeless. He hopes his fledgling company will help those who are where he has been, saying, “I have a heart for helping humanity.” Meanwhile, he will be at the Dollars Corner intersection with his sign. Lopez believes it’s preferable to being a workaholic whose only goal is the acquisition of wealth. “It has its ups and downs, but it’s a lot better than not working at all,” he said.

Take This Job And Love It

Jared Sims of Flawless Window Cleaning has a team of hard workers who venture out every day to make sure local homes and businesses look great.

Take This Job And Love It: Stan And Jed Become Window Washers (OKLAHOMA CITY) - All this week we're taking your job and loving it. On Wednesday, it's Stan Miller and Jed Castles' turn. Stan Miller and Jed Castles joined a local window washer and learned just how physically challenging the job can be. Jared Simms of Flawless Window Cleaning has a team of hard workers who venture out every day to make sure local homes and businesses look great.

Dangling Off A Skyscraper - An Expert's View

Marty Tuzman on the roof of Mellon Bank Center with Comcast Center in the background.

Dangling off a skyscraper: An expert's view on what happened at World Trade Center - As two window cleaners dangled from the 69th floor at 1 World Trade Center in New York last week, Marty Tuzman and his colleagues were watching the harrowing events unfold through the eyes of an expert.

Tuzman owns Jenkintown Building Services, which is the dominant window cleaning company in the Philadelphia area. His team has worked on most of the skyscrapers in Center City including Comcast Center, One and Two Liberty Place, Cira Centre and Centre Square as well as low-rise buildings throughout the suburbs and other commercial developments in the region.

The job of a highrise window cleaner involves risks but those risks are mitigated through a series of safety measures that helped to save the two workers in New York, such as a routine and oft repeated round of security checks.

Tuzman shared his thoughts on the New York episode, how accidents like that are handled and whether Philadelphia is prepared to execute its own rescue if a similar event would take place here. The Building Owners and Managers Association of Philadelphia and Tuzman engaged this past spring in a similar mock scenario as a training exercise. Those involved included fire, police and other emergency personnel, building engineers and managers, contractors and the mayor's office of communications. Those participating walked through every foreseeable aspect of a situation experienced last week in New York.

"It was enlightening," Tuzman said.

It wasn't long after the two New York window cleaners were lowered down the facade of 1 World Trade Center that something went wrong. The rig that was transporting them failed and it was hanging lopsided. At that point, it's important for the workers to stay level headed, Tuzman said.

"It's so hard under that pressure to remain calm and follow protocol and procedure but you have to," he said. "You have to make sure everyone is communicating properly...the building management, company management, fire and rescue."

While an event like this is unfolding high above, it's also imperative to ensure the streets and sidewalks below are completely barricaded so the public can be kept safe if "God forbid any further failure in equipment happens," Tuzman said.

Most rig equipment has technology that would allow the scaffolding and stage to level out in these situations, Tuzman said. An override would permit the window washers, who work in tandem to lower the rig, to reset and adjust the sophisticated, computerized equipment and balance a rig. Contact is made with the building engineer and even the manufacturer of the equipment to troubleshoot and resolve the situation if that override isn't working.

Equipment failure that couldn't be fixed appears to have caused the situation in New York. The head of Upgrade Service, the firm that employed the men working at 1 World Trade Center, told the New York Times the accident was apparently caused by "equipment failure of the traction hoist brake mechanism that supports one side of the rig."

The rig couldn't be balanced, and at that point a rescue initiated.

"Once you have exhausted those possibilities, then you go into rescue mode," he said.

All the while, there's constant contact with the men on rig, making sure they are calm and no other issues have cropped up to put them in further danger.

Different rescue approaches can be taken. In some cases, another rig can be lowered safely down from the roof and the workers can transfer onto it. However, many commercial building roof tops aren't designed to accommodate that. A flat roof can handle something like that but many peak and their angular design not conducive for such a rescue. Some towers have built in mechanical arms used for washing that can be tapped for a rescue but they are expensive and uncommon.

When a roof-top rescue isn't an option, then slicing a window and pulling the workers in is the best way to save them, Tuzman said. That is what happened in New York. Rescue personnel cut out a large hole in a window closest to the two stranded workers and they were pulled safely into the building.

Tuzman said Jenkintown's workers have had some precarious moments while window washing high in the sky. "We have had equipment issues but not as severe as that," he said.

The safety of high-rise window cleaners is getting attention after the frightening incident at One World Trade Center in New York City on November 12. Two window washers were rescued nearly 70 stories above the ground after the cable on their scaffolding gave way. Both workers suffered hypothermia, but are otherwise okay. The situation could have been much worse. WCVB TV Channel 5 did a report on the incident and spoke with Matt Pierce, Owner of Pierce Property Services of Woburn, MA.

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.

Juan Lizama & Juan Lopez $26.89 An Hour

Juan Lizama, left, and Juan Lopez, the window washers who were rescued from the side of 1 World Trade Center, spoke at a news conference Friday. “Thank you everybody,” Lizama said Friday. “Thank you fire department.” “Honestly, I’m happy to have made it, got home to see my family another day,” said Lopez. “It was definitely terrifying.”

Window Washers Defy Death But Can Start Off Making Just $12 Per Hour: Washing skyscraper windows remains a perilous profession, requiring workers to have the reflexes of a trapeze performer high above city streets. The dramatic rescue Wednesday of two New York City window cleaners — stranded nearly 70 stories off the World Trade Center tower — has put a fresh spotlight on a high-risk job that often begins with modest pay.

And the practice of putting men and women aloft to scrub windows isn’t expected to change any time soon, as the use of labor-saving robots to replace workers has yet to gain a foothold across the industry, experts say. “I guess with our modern technology, we can put people on the moon, but we can’t develop the equipment that can work across the board,” Mark Reinhart, the president of the International Window Cleaning Association, said Thursday.

One product on the market for homeowners operates like a robotic vacuum cleaner, moving up and down the surface of the windowpane. There are other unmanned machines that scrub larger buildings, typically around 10 stories or lower — but they’re only useful on a handful of structures, said Stefan Bright, the International Window Cleaning Association’s safety director. “They have to be all glass because brick and windows can really mess things up,” Bright said.

Despite the inherent dangers involved in the industry, it can take a while before a window washer sees a soaring salary. A window cleaner washing storefronts or homes might only earn $12 to $15 per hour, Reinhart said. But someone doing larger commercial properties, including skyscrapers, could earn $15 to $25 per hour. In New York, where the risks are presumably higher because of the dizzying heights, it’s not unheard of for veterans with all the know-how to reach $29 to $35 per hour. Getting paid top dollar, however, requires months and years of experience with equipment and certification.

Lizama said he panicked a little when the scaffold started tilting 68 stories up the nation's tallest skyscraper, but "we were always in control of the situation." Lizama said he used his cellphone to call his wife and tell her he was fine.

Juan Lizama delivered his statement in Spanish, but added in English, "God bless America. I'm very happy to be here." A translator said Lizama called his wife from the scaffolding to tell her he was OK and would be home soon. Lizama and Lopez spoke in both English and Spanish at the news conference at the offices of their union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. They stressed the importance of their safety training. "I know, this job, safety No. 1," the El Salvador-born Lizama said. "One mistake, no estoy here."

With an emphasis on safety training a top priority, there is a silver lining: Deaths remain rare in the industry. There has been one high-rise fatality per year in the last four years in the U.S., according to the International Window Cleaning Association. That’s with an estimated 1.5 million “exposures” — when workers are on the sides of buildings — a year.

Window washers who spoke with NBC News said they’re in no rush to see their jobs taken over by new technology. This work is demanding but steady, said Brent Weingard, who’s washed skyscrapers in Manhattan as tall as 60 stories. “Some of us think there’s an art to what we do,” he said. “I’ve seen the machines, but I still believe a man on the glass washing windows does it best.”

Window Washer Talks About Experience In 1 WTC Scaffold Mishap: One of the window washers who was aboard a scaffold that collapsed at One World Trade Center said he overcame his fear by putting his training into action. As investigators continued to probe the Wednesday incident that left two window washers dangling 68 stories above the street, window washer Juan Lopez told his story exclusively to CBS2’s Sonia Rincon.

The workers were trapped when a cable suddenly developed slack around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday.

The window washers, Juan Lizama, 41, of West New York, New Jersey; and Juan Lopez, 43, of the Bronx, were working on the south side of the building when one of the platform’s four cables abruptly gave way, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. Before a cable came loose and the scaffold slumped to one side, Lopez said everything was fine – and exactly as it should have been.

We made sure the scaffold was intact before we jumped in, as we do every day,” Lopez said. “At the moment when it happened, it was just reaction.” So when the accident happened — and Lopez and his partner, Juan Lizama, found themselves dangling precariously – he said there were a few minutes where they were truly scared. But their training kicked in. “My first reaction is, of course, to hit all the emergency brakes — which is what we were trained for,” Lopez said. “It’s just instinct, you know — survival.”

Lopez said once the scaffold stopped moving, he and Lizama knew it was just a matter of time before they would be rescued. Either another scaffold would be lowered, or the window would be cut.

“It calms you down after a while,” Lopez said. “Once you realize you’re steady, you know, you take a breath and realize — you know, you put everything together, all the safety that you learned. You realize that, you know, everything is good.” And everything was good, Lopez said, when he saw his bosses from contractor Upgrade Services and the first responders. “I can’t explain the relief that I felt – you know, just seeing their face. It was amazing,” he said. “Like I said, I can’t thank them enough — the FDNY, the police, everyone that came in and helped us out.”

Lopez said when the accident happened, the first thing he thought of was his family. “My wife, my kids, my mother, my father — and that gives you nothing but strength, you know, to hold on, and make sure the impossible will be possible,” he said. He has four little girls — including 6-month-old twins – who are too young to understand what happened. But his wife knew. “I’m just glad I wasn’t there to see their reaction with them when I was in there, because what I heard was everyone crying – something I can’t bear with,” Lopez said. “Just the thought of them gets me emotional.”

Upgrade president and chief executive officer John McDermott was a high-rise window washer once himself. He said Lopez and Lizama did everything right. “As you saw, the scaffold was virtually vertical, and nothing fell from the scaffold,” McDermott said. “So they not only protected themselves, they protected the pedestrians below by taking the proper procedures.” McDermott said it was Lopez and Lizama’s bravery, and their training, that kept them calm. “It takes a special breed to be a window cleaner,” McDermott said. “But if you understand the technology, you know that even though they had a slack rope situation because of the equipment malfunction on one side, any one of the four cables on that system can hold four times the weight of the rig.”

Lopez said he is not sure if his partner made a phone call. But he didn’t dare take his phone out for fear he might drop it. “My phone kept ringing and ringing, and I just decided to listen to my ringtone, as it rang. It calmed me down as well, you know?” he said. Lopez said his phone was ringing because people were well aware of what was happening. “Oh yeah — family, everyone,” he said. In fact, Lopez’s family was worried sick that he could be one of the men that had captivated the city’s attention.

CBS2 also tried to speak with Lizama. He was not home. Lopez said he is grateful to have Lizama as a partner, and he can’t remember much about what they said when they were there. “From time to time: ‘Are you ok? How’s everything?,’ you know, make sure,” Lopez said. “Once the fire lines and everything come in… we had to, one thing, not panic.” Lizama has 14 years on the job. Lopez has five. “Oh I love it. I definitely do. It’s a wonderful line of business,” he said. “As scary as it — I would recommend it for anybody, as crazy as it sounds.”

Lizama and Lopez were examined at a hospital and were released. Lopez said he is mentally preparing himself to get back to work after a few days off. “I’m definitely looking forward to going back to work — just a matter of time,” he said. The firm for which they work, Upgrade Services, is also contracted to other prominent New York skyscrapers including the nearby 4 World Trade Center.

Window cleaners earn a starting wage of about $26 an hour.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro: “It suddenly went from horizontal to nearly vertical,” Nigro said.

Images from the scene showed the scaffolding dangling at a precarious angle as emergency responders tried to rescue the workers and secure the dangling scaffold platform. Additional safety lines were lowered to the workers along with a radio so they could communicate with the rescue team. “At no time were the people in the scaffold unsecured. They were secured both by their own belts and the ropes by the roof,” Nigro said. A rescue basket with one officer each from the NYPD and the Port Authority was deployed in an effort to get to the trapped workers, but the FDNY managed to cut through a window and pull them to safety around 2:15 p.m.

Window Washing Skills Beyond a Robot’s Reach: As a pair of window washers clung to a scaffold dangling outside the 68th floor of 1 World Trade Center on Wednesday, the captivating drama left some below wondering: Why were they up there at all? In an age when a few clicks on a cellphone can solve myriad problems, it seems fair to ask why people are still descending from the roofs of skyscrapers to rub soapy water on glass and wipe it off with a squeegee. Can’t robots take on this simple, repetitive task and relieve humans of the risk of injury, or death, from a plunge to the sidewalk?

The simple answer, several experts said, is that washing windows is something that machines still cannot do as well as people can. The more complicated answer is that high-rise buildings are more complicated than they used to be. “Building are starting to look like huge sculptures in the sky,” said Craig S. Caulkins, who consults with building owners on how to maintain their exteriors. “A robot can’t maneuver to get around those curves to get into the facets of the building,” he said.

Mr. Caulkins, the president of C. S. Caulkins Co. in Irvine, Calif., said “the robots have problems.” Most notably, he said, robotic cleaning systems tend to leave dirt in the corners of the glass walls that are designed to provide panoramic views from high floors. “If you are a fastidious owner wanting clean, clean windows so you can take advantage of that very expensive view that you bought, the last thing you want to see is that gray area around the rim of the window,” Mr. Caulkins said.

Indeed, prime examples of that particular shortcoming are the towers of the original World Trade Center; the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey equipped those buildings with a mechanical apparatus for cleaning their windows, but it worked so poorly that human window washers had to follow behind to catch the spots the machine missed, said Steven Plate, director of the World Trade Center construction department at the Port Authority. “It was never effective,” Mr. Plate said in an interview on Thursday. “It basically didn’t clean the building.”

One of the men who kept the glass of the twin towers clean was Roko Camaj, whose hazardous duty was the subject of a children’s book “Window Washer: At Work Above the Clouds.” The book, published in 1995, quoted Mr. Camaj saying that “Ten years from now, all window washing will probably be done by a machine.” On that point, Mr. Camaj, who was killed when the towers were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, was not a prophet. Mr. Caulkins said “there may be several dozen” skyscrapers in the entire country that employ robots to clean their windows.

Another reason for the sparse use of robots is that buildings require a lot more maintenance than just window cleaning, Mr. Caulkins said. Equipment is needed to lower people to repair facades and broken windows, like the one that rescue workers had to cut through to rescue the window washers on Wednesday, he said. “At some point you need workers up on the side of that building,” Mr. Caulkins said. If a building requires a mechanism on the roof to lower a platform for that sort of work, the owner is unlikely to invest in a second, mechanized system for cleaning the glass, he said.

In all, there are about 700 scaffolds for window washing on buildings in New York City, said Gerard McEneaney, a field representative for about 500 washers who are members of S.E.I.U. Local 32BJ, a union representing building service employees. Mr. McEneaney said he understood why the owners of 1 World Trade Center would employ humans to clean the tapered glass facade. “They want that building sparkling, sparkling clean,” he said.

His members are willing to do the work because it pays well: as much $26.89 an hour plus benefits. Many of the window cleaners are immigrants from South America. “They’re fearless guys, fearless workers,” Mr. McEneaney said. Having spent nine years on scaffolds in New York City, he said he knew firsthand how scary an ordeal like the one on Wednesday could be. The first time he descended on a scaffold at 1 Penn Plaza, he said, his end of the platform did not stop when it should have, tilting the scaffold. His partner reacted quickly and lowered his end of the platform to keep it level and avert the need for a rescue, he said. “In a job where you know your life hangs in the balance, you just kind of accept it and rely on your partner and pray that your training has prepared you.”

Window Washers Brave Cleaning The Sunsphere

Window cleaners say the curved sides make the Sunsphere one of the most challenging buildings to clean.

Window washers brave cleaning the Sunsphere (Downtown Knoxville): Window washers gave the Sunsphere a cleaning this week. Rex Richardson, assistant to the owner of Apex Window Cleaning, said it's one of the most difficult buildings their team washes. "It's a challenge," Richardson said. "This one's much more difficult than any other building we do by a long shot."

The crew finished up Wednesday afternoon after national news broke about two window washers left dangling for two hours from the 69th floor of One World Trade Center before firefighters rescued them. Shane Thornton, a window cleaner, said safety is a top priority for their team, especially when cleaning the curved surfaces of the Sunsphere. "I was a little scared," Thornton said. "It was different than any other buildings that I've done. I've done higher, but I've never done a circle before, a sphere."

Thornton said the Apex employees use ropes to repel down the sides of buildings, which he said is safer than the swing stage or scaffolding that was used in the New York incident. He said the ropes can handle a lot more weight than what most of the employees weigh, and there is a primary line and a safety line. "It was a little tricky," Thornton said. "I'd never done anything like this before. Most of my roofs were flat. Luckily, everybody that I work with has a lot more experience than I do."

Richardson said window cleaners see every angle of glass possible when cleaning the horizontal, vertical, and upside down surfaces of the Sunsphere. "As long as we do everything right, we do everything we're supposed to, take those safety steps, these buildings would have to fall before we do," Thornton said.

Breaking News - Window Washers Stranded, Hanging Perilously At 1 World Trade Center

Two window cleaners cling to a platform on the side of the World Trade Center in New York.

World Trade Center: Terrified Window Cleaners Hanging From New York Skyscraper [FIRST PHOTOS] - Two World Trade Center window cleaners are reportedly clinging on for their lives from a platform after it appeared to experience a technical problem. The platform can be seen jackknifed near the 68th floor, approximately 400m up the 104-floor One World Trade Centre tower.

The incident began at around 12:45 pm on the south side of the building, reported New York CBS. Emergency services have rushed to the scene in an effort to rescue the workers and secure the dangling scaffold platform and are considering removing a window pane to get to the stranded men.

The cleaners had reportedly finished their work on one side of the building's exterior, which was opened just nine days ago on 3 November, and were about to ascend to the top of the tower when one of the motors is said to have failed. Another cleaning crew are believed to be working on the opposite face of the building unaware of the plight of their colleagues.

Reports suggest that the cleaners in question had finished their work and were making their way back to the top of the building when a cable connected to their scaffolding failed. A rescue operation is currently underway.

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UPDATE: The window washers have been pulled to safety.

CBS New York reports that at least two window washers are trapped on the scaffolding that hung sideways when one of its motors malfunctioned at 12:45 p.m. CBS News crews caught images on their live stream appearing to show a man on the scaffolding waving his arms. The fire department told CBS that the workers are not injured. The station also reported that the streets below have been blocked off and pedestrians were evacuated for safety.

The Wall Street Journal spoke to a New York Fire Department spokesperson who said, “They are in a difficult spot. They are feeling the effects of hanging in there.” Officials told PIX11 That firefighters are cutting the glass near the scaffolding so they can get the workers out and bring them to safety. PIX11 also notes that winds were blowing at about 6 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service. One of the windows has apparently been popped. This is a developing story.