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Window washer survives eight-storey fall

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 06/6/2012 6:31 PM | Comments: 0

Police officers inspect the scene of an accident at an apartment block on Cambridge Street Wednesday where a window washer's rope broke, causing him to fall eight storeys into a solarium. (RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

A window washer is lucky to be alive after falling eight storeys and smashing through a glass solarium that probably saved his life, said a witness to the workplace accident Wednesday.

The window washer was reported in critical condition after a fall from Cambridge Gardens at 850 Cambridge St. just after 3 p.m.

Winnipeg police remained on the scene with Workplace Safety and Health investigators long after emergency crews transported to man to hospital.

James Warren said he was leaving his grandmother’s apartment when he saw the worker just after his fall and minutes before emergency crews responded to help.

"He was covered in blood and glass. He was awake and he was sitting up but he was obviously in shock," said Warren."His co-worker said he'd crushed a leg. He was bleeding profusely from the head and mouth."

Warren said the worker just missed being impaled on a picket fence around the plants in the solarium by the foyer.

"If you're inside, you would have seen the picket fence and he probably missed it by half a foot. He's lucky to be alive."

The worker was part of a three-man window-washing crew.

The solarium that broke the worker's fall juts out perhaps a metre from one small portion of the front of the block.

The back of the building is covered in concrete, with a row of metal trash bins lined up by the building. A fall there would likely have been fatal, the witness said.

The accident sobered residents who expressed horror at the fall. One resident who gave her name as Maureen pointed to the solarium window on the ground floor and, like Warren, reported the glassed-in structure had broken the worker's fall.

Another resident who arrived home after work said the accident spooked her because it happened a day after she saw a window washer at work, hanging from a harness outside her office window.

Residents, said the woman, had recently received a notice from building managers that window washers would be at work outside their apartments.

"I was happy when we got the letters they were washing the windows but to hear something like this? That's sad," the woman said.

Alexandra.Paul@freepress.mb.ca

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