Window washer falls 11 stories...lives
A moving car, quick-thinking bystanders and a whole lot of grace helped a San Francisco window washer survive an 11-story fall, witnesses said.
The window washer, whose name was not released, fell screaming from the roof of a downtown building. He landed with a crash onto a moving sedan, a Toyota Camry driven by Mohammad Alcozai.
The window washer stayed on the car for a moment, then rolled onto the pavement, bleeding, breathing hard, but conscious, police and witnesses said.
More than a dozen people, including the car's driver, a retired Army colonel and a nurse, came to the man's rescue. They called 911 and in the frantic minutes before an ambulance arrived, detoured traffic and covered the man with clothes and tried to comfort him.
"At first all I saw was, out of the corner of my eye, a blue streak falling," Sam Hartwell, a banker and retired Army Col. told The San Francisco Chronicle. "Then I heard that loud crash, the shattering glass and a thud. It wasn't until the man rolled over onto the pavement and landed on his back that I realized it was a person."
Hartwell, who served three years in Afghanistan and retired from the military in March, told the paper that he knew not to move the victim. He said the man was conscious but bleeding, and had difficulty breathing.
"We spoke to him, reassuring him that help was on the way," Hartwell told the newspaper. "He was doing his best to control his breathing, but he couldn't speak. I got close and told him, 'Breathe, just breathe.'"
Alcozai jumped out of his car as soon as the man landed on it. The roof collapsed and the car was totaled, but Alcozai walked away unscathed.
"I'm very happy that I didn't get hurt," Alcozai told KGO-TV after the accident. "Hopefully he can make it. I pray for him that he can make it."
Alcozai calls it a "miracle" that he and the window washer survived. He told The Chronicle that he was meant to be there when the accident happened. He said he was supposed to go on a call Friday morning, but it was canceled, so he went downtown. He said he was making a left turn when his car's navigation system went blank, so he slowed down.
As the system turned back on, he sped up — "and that's when something hit my car with a terrible thump," he told the newspaper.
"With all the changes in where I went and how I was going this morning, I think God wanted me to be there just at the moment that poor man fell," Alcozai said. "It was a miracle that he was able to fall in my car, and it was a miracle that I was OK.
Alcozai's wife, Wahida Noorzad, told The Chronicle that she couldn't believe it when she saw the wreckage of the Camry, which had 300,000 miles on it and was about to be replaced by a new car that they just bought.
"The only spot that wasn't smashed in was the spot where my husband was," she said. "It was a nightmare to look at that vehicle."
The window washer remains in San Francisco General Hospital with life-threatening injuries. Cal/OSHA spokeswoman Julia Bernstein said the man suffered a broken arm and injuries to his side, KGO reported.
The man was moving equipment on the roof of a bank building in the heart of San Francisco's financial district and not on a window-washing platform when he fell, San Francisco police Sgt. Danielle Newman said, according to the Associated Press. The platform was on the ground at the side of the building, and cables were hanging from its sides. It was not clear whether the man was setting the platform up, but he was working with a partner, police said.
The man may have slipped as he was adjusting the cables of this rig, KGO reported. He apparently had not clipped himself onto the safety line.
The man worked for Concord, Calif.-based Century Window Cleaning, said Peter Melton, a spokesman for the California state division of occupational safety and health.
The company was cited for one serious violation and three other violations in 2008, one of them related to instructing window-cleaning employees in the proper use of all equipment provided to them, and supervising the use of the equipment and safety devices to insure that safe working practices are observed, according to federal records. The company was fined more than $6,500, though the fine was eventually reduced to a little more than $2,700.
