Window Washer Survives 47-Story Fall

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Trek

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Just thought I'd share this miraculous story.

“This is right up there with those anecdotes of people falling out of airplanes and surviving, people whose parachutes don’t open and somehow they manage to survive,” Barie said in an interview after the news conference. “We’re talking about tiny, tiny percentages, well under 1 percent, of people who fall that distance and survive.”

Manhattan Window Washer Survives 47-Story Fall | TheLedger.com
 
I read that earlier today.

What an amazing story. Just incredible that somebody survived that fall.
 
That is amazing!

I had a great-uncle who was a window washer in St. Louis, and in the early '60's, his platform's rigging broke and he fell 5 stories to the sidewalk below. He had a few minor fractures, several internal injuries, but he also broke his neck. The doctors didn't expect him to live. But he did!

After MANY surgeries to repair or replace broken parts, and lots of therapy, they told him that he would be confined to a wheelchair or his recliner for the rest of his life. He told them that he thought that was a bunch of bullsh*t, and that he'd prove them wrong.

As soon as he was able to, he moved from downtown St. Louis to a a small house in a rural town in southern IL. In just over a year he was walking with a walker, then not to long after that he graduated to 2 canes. At that point he started a large garden (~1500 sq.ft.)....without assistance from anyone. A few years later he was down to 1 cane, had added onto his house and remodeled it, expanded his garden, was actively involved in a couple of civic orgs, was an antique collector & dealer, and started raising worms and opened his own bait shop.

About 10 years after his fall, he was walking without a cane. He had been going back to the doctor in St. Louis for several years, so they could check his progress and whatever. He went for his last visit in about 1973, and as he was leaving the office, the Dr. told him he had forgot to take his cane. My uncle said that he told him to keep it and stick up his a**, as a reminder to never tell anyone that they'd never walk again. He was a wonderfully, ornery old cuss! :D

The only major lasting affect that he had until he died, was no feeling in his fingers.
 
Goonie, what an inspiring story!! And I think I have trouble with home improvement projects, though I'm in perfectly good health. :rolleyes:Your great-uncle's story sure makes one think about one's perspective when thinking something would be hard to do.

I read about the window washer that fell 47 floors in NYC yesterday, and was amazed. :eek: It is miraculous that he is alive, though he does have a long, tough road ahead of him.
 
Want2retire said:
Goonie, what an inspiring story!! And I think I have trouble with home improvement projects, though I'm in perfectly good health. :rolleyes:Your great-uncle's story sure makes one think about one's perspective when thinking something would be hard to do.
Click to expand...

He said he had one advantage that we didn't......it didn't hurt when he missed a nail and hit his thumb! ;)
 
Trek said:
Just thought I'd share this miraculous story.

“This is right up there with those anecdotes of people falling out of airplanes and surviving, people whose parachutes don’t open and somehow they manage to survive,” Barie said in an interview after the news conference. “We’re talking about tiny, tiny percentages, well under 1 percent, of people who fall that distance and survive.”

Manhattan Window Washer Survives 47-Story Fall | TheLedger.com
Click to expand...

Was it also a miracle that his brother died in the same incident?
 
I suspect a little sensationalizing here, since falling 47 stories is different from riding a platform down while it is sliding down a track. Not saying it would be easy to survive that, but what happened may have been different from a freefall.

...clinging to his 3-foot-wide window washer’s platform as it shot down the dark glass face of an Upper East Side apartment building.
 
TromboneAl said:
I suspect a little sensationalizing here, since falling 47 stories is different from riding a platform down while it is sliding down a track. Not saying it would be easy to survive that, but what happened may have been different from a freefall.

...clinging to his 3-foot-wide window washer’s platform as it shot down the dark glass face of an Upper East Side apartment building.
Click to expand...

I'm sure that helped. Still amazing one could survive it.

Five days later, the answer can still be only guessed at. Officials and window-washing colleagues of the two brothers speculated that they tried to ride their platform to the ground, as one window washer said he had been trained to do in such an accident.
If so, they were relying on basic physics — the platform would have generated some small amount of wind resistance, slowing the fall — and luck.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/nyregion/12fall.html
 
It makes a difference in how they are 'attached' to the building... some are connected to tracks that run up and down the building... but many are not.. .they just hang from hooks off the roof...

The ones that I have seen have some equipment and other 'stuff' hanging off the bottom that would 'slow' you down a very little bit (think of it as the hood of your car crushing first).. and that might have been enough to save him...

But, if it was a free fall... I don't see it making much of a difference...

BTW, where were their safety lines? And how could both ropes (wires) break at the same time? Seems like a lawsuit is coming..
 
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