NEW YORK — Their job was one
of routine peril — washing windows on Manhattan skyscrapers.
The danger proved deadly for Edgar Moreno and nearly so for his
brother. Their scaffold gave way as they stepped onto it Friday
from the roof of a 47-story Upper East Side apartment building,
sending them on a horrifying plunge to a plaza below.
“They apparently fell all the way from the top,” said Fire
Department spokesman John Mulligan.
Edgar Moreno, 30, of Linden, N.J., was pronounced dead at the
scene. His 37-year-old brother was taken to a hospital in critical
condition, officials said. No update on his condition was available
early Saturday from firefighters or police.
Investigation under way
Authorities were investigating why the scaffold failed. Solow
Management Corp., the building’s owner, issued a statement Friday
extending sympathy to the workers’ family and said it was
cooperating with the investigation.
Officials said the two worked for City Wide Window Cleaning in
Queens. One of the company’s phone numbers was out of service, and
a person who answered a second number said she was authorized only
to answer service calls and would not take a message seeking
comment.
A doorman at the building said the window washers had worked
there for about three years.
Phil Stellar, who lives on the ninth floor of the modern glass
tower on East 66th Street, was packing for a business trip around
10:30 a.m. Friday when he said, “I heard a stunning rumble.”
‘Life is very tentative’
It was the scaffold falling. Parts of it and Edgar Moreno’s body
landed in a plaza outside the building.
“It’s a horrible, horrible tragedy and a reminder that life is
very tentative,” Stellar said.
About three hours after the accident, a piece of glass from a
window on the top floor, where the scaffold had been attached, fell
to the ground. No one was hurt when the glass fell, but the city
Buildings Department ordered the street partially blocked until
glass damaged by the falling scaffold was repaired. The agency also
ordered repairs to a nearby home where debris fell through the
skylights.
Scaffolds cover the facades of thousands of buildings in New
York City, mostly at construction sites.
In 2006, 43 construction workers died on the job in New York,
according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The
death toll was up 87 percent from 2005, when 23 people died.
-- AP
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22156538/