Brothers Concerned About Scaffold, Relative Says

Two brothers who plunged 47 stories from a Manhattan building when their window-washing platform collapsed — killing one and gravely injuring the other — knew their scaffold had a mechanical problem before they ascended the tower, but were assured by a boss that it had been fixed, a family member said yesterday.

The family member, José Cumbicos, a brother-in-law, said that the brothers, Edgar and Alcides Moreno, had spoken of their concern about the scaffold in a telephone conversation with him Friday at 8:30 a.m., less than two hours before they went to work at the Solow Tower, at 265 East 66th Street, at Second Avenue.

Mr. Cumbicos, himself a window washer who had worked with Alcides Moreno for years, recalled that the brothers had told him of at least three problems with the Solow Tower scaffold this year, including one that had put it out of commission in the summer. He said he had urged them not to go to work on Friday.

“I said, ‘It’s cold, don’t go to work, don’t take chances with that scaffolding,’” Mr. Cumbicos said.

But Alcides, with whom he was conversing in Spanish, “told me their boss had called them and said, ‘The scaffolding was fixed, come to work.’ So they both left.”

Mr. Cumbicos, in an interview at his home in East Newark, said that he did not know the full name of the boss, but that Alcides referred to him as “Tony,” apparently trusted him and seemed to be reassured about the safety of the scaffold, which he said had been used without incident earlier in the week.

The Morenos traveled to the city from their home in Linden, N.J., and arrived at Solow Tower about 10 a.m. They took an elevator to the roof of the skyscraper, and within minutes both had plunged over the parapet. Edgar was cut in half by a fence in an alleyway below, and Alcides suffered extensive critical injuries.

The brothers were employed by City Wide Window Cleaning of Jamaica, Queens. Messages left with an answering service were not returned last night, and efforts to reach the owner, Michael Hoszowski, for comment were not successful. The building’s owner, Solow Management Corporation, issued a statement on Friday expressing sympathy for the victims and their families and pledging cooperation with investigators.

The disclosures by Mr. Cumbicos, who is married to Edilma Moreno, a sister of the brothers, shed new light on an accident that is under investigation by city, state and federal agencies.

Investigators confirmed yesterday that neither worker was wearing a harness, as required on all window-washing jobs, but said it was unclear if this was negligence or if the men had been dragged over the edge of the roof by whipsawing cables before they had a chance to put on their harnesses.

New details about the victims’ background emerged from family members and investigators as Alcides Moreno, 37, continued his struggle for life at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan while relatives and friends kept a vigil and mourned Edgar Moreno.

Family members also corrected some information about the brothers that had been misrepresented on Friday by several neighbors in Linden, where the Moreno brothers shared a home. They said it was Alcides, not Edgar, who is married to Rosario Moreno and is the father of three children: two sons, aged 14 and 7, and a 10-year-old daughter, all of whom live in the Linden house. Edgar, 30, was married to a woman who lives in Ecuador.

José Castillo, a cousin of the Moreno brothers, said that Alcides immigrated to the United States 12 years ago and that Edgar came about a decade ago. Both had worked at the dangerous job of window washing in high-rise buildings since their arrivals.

“I know it was a risky job,” Mr. Castillo said, “but they took every precaution when they worked.” He added, “Something was wrong with the scaffold.”

That was a judgment that some investigators appeared to confirm on Friday. The brothers worked on what is known as a swing scaffold, a built-in feature of the tower. It is anchored by cables to a circular rooftop track that lets workers move the platform so window washers can reach any point on the facade. The scaffold cables are motorized, allowing the washers to move up and down at the press of a button. At the roof, the cables are strung through arms that reach out over the parapet and hold the scaffold in place within reach of the windows.

One investigator said on Friday that new cables had been installed on the scaffold, but it was unclear who did the work, when it was done and whether it was satisfactorily completed. Mr. Cumbicos said it was highly unusual for the Moreno brothers to begin work without hooking themselves up to safety harnesses, which are nylon belts that loop around the legs and arms and are connected to cables anchored on the roof.

One scenario for the accident, an investigator said, was that the scaffold cable had not been securely anchored to the track on the roof, and that when the men stepped on the scaffold, they and the platform plunged down.

Another scenario, an investigator said, was that the cables had come loose from the track in some way, then whipsawed around and dragged the men over the parapet before they had a chance to hook up their safety harnesses.

In an alley beside the tower yesterday morning, the crumpled remnants of the 16-foot aluminum scaffold were visible, along with chunks of wood and metal that appeared to be debris left by the accident. In the afternoon, the debris was moved into an unoccupied retail space on the ground floor.

The accident — the first involving the death of a window washer in the city since May 2005 — is under investigation by the city’s Department of Buildings; the state’s Department of Labor, which inspects and regulates window-washing scaffolds; and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which examines workplace fatalities.

Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, confirmed that an investigation was under way, but said it was too soon to discuss details. She acknowledged that City Wide Window Cleaning would be part of the inquiry, along with Solow Management.

Leo Rosales, director of communications for the Department of Labor, confirmed that his agency was investigating. He said his department inspected 600 window-cleaning scaffolds a year in New York City, and noted that the equipment at Solow Tower had been inspected in June. Inspectors, he said, found cables, harnesses, controls and other safety equipment to be working properly.

An OSHA spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Mr. Castillo and another brother-in-law, Juvan Rivas, said doctors had told the family of the injuries Alcides Moreno suffered, including blood clots in the brain, collapsed lungs, damaged kidneys, numerous bone fractures and extensive internal injuries. He underwent surgery on Friday night, Mr. Castillo said, and afterward, the doctors spoke to the family.

“The only sign that he’s alive is that he’s breathing,” Mr. Castillo said.

Mr. Rivas added: “We’re praying that he makes it through this. It’s hard to understand why this happened. God only knows why.”

Mr. Rivas said the brothers had come to America for a better life, and had tasted some success. They each owned a car, and for some years had shared a brick and wood-frame ranch house at 1016 Clinton Street in Linden, a working-class community in Union County. The home, bought about six years ago, is worth about $350,000 today, neighbors said. Alcides Moreno’s children attended parochial schools, and played baseball and soccer. The family often held barbecues in the summer, and swam in a backyard pool.

Mr. Rivas said both brothers were American citizens, but Jorge Alvarez, who identified himself as a longtime friend of the brothers, said in an e-mail message from Ecuador that Alcides was a citizen and Edgar was a legal resident who had applied for citizenship.

Felix Chininin, 47, a family friend who had known the brothers from their days together in Ecuador, said the Morenos had come from the town of Macará in southern Ecuador. “Edgar was very hard-working, very dedicated to his family,” Mr. Chininin said outside the Linden home. “He set an example for all of us.” Edgar often sent money home to his wife, and had planned to bring her to this country soon.

Now, he said, Ecuadoreans in the New York area are rallying around the family and plans are being made to raise money to assist the family and to send Edgar’s body back to Ecuador.

If the brothers were ever worried about the dangers of their job, they never mentioned it, Mr. Rivas said. Instead, they spoke of the wondrous vistas of New York City from the roof of the 46-story tower where they worked. “They talked about the views, and they took pictures from up there,” Mr. Rivas said.

One brother killed, another critical after Upper East Side scaffolding collapse

By MIKE JACCARINO and JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, December 7th 2007, 7:45 PM
The high-rise building at 265 East 66th St., where a window-washing scaffold plunged 40 stories. One worker was killed and his brother was seriously injured. Handschuh/News

The high-rise building at 265 East 66th St., where a window-washing scaffold plunged 40 stories. One worker was killed and his brother was seriously injured.

A pair of brothers washing windows on an upper East Side skyscraper plunged 43 stories to the sidewalk below Friday after their scaffolding suddenly collapsed.

Edgar Moreno died on impact; his brother Alcides was still clinging to life in the hours after the terrifying 10:30 a.m. accident, officials said.

"I heard this boom, an explosion," said Phil Stellar, who lives on the 9th floor of the apartment building where the brothers were working.

"[It was] a big noise that sounded like a bomb had blown up," Stellar said. "It was like a roller-coaster sound times ten."

Edgar Moreno, 30, landed on a fence and his body was cut in half, horrified witnesses said. He died instantly.

Alcides Moreno, 37, was listed in extremely critical condition at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center Friday night.

Neither brother was wearing a required safety harness, a Department of Buildings official said.

"Oh my God, I feel sorry for his family," said Tessie Smith, 77, who lives across the street from the Linden, N.J., home where Edgar Moreno lived with his brother, wife, and three children.

"It's very bad," she said. "You wonder how [his family] is going to survive."

Worried relatives kept vigil at the hospital Friday night, hoping that Alcides Moreno would make a miraculous recovery.

Alcides Moreno - who emigrated from Ecuador with his brother - was saving money to bring his wife to the United States next year, a family friend said.

The Morenos were employed by City Wide Window Cleaning and had checked in for work at the Solow Residences on E. 66th St. at 9:30 a.m., officials said.

Preliminary reports indicate the swing scaffold - the permanent portion of the scaffolding built on the building's roof to facilitate window washing - failed. That caused the metal platform to give way when the Morenos stepped on it, the DOB said.

Calls to the Queens-based City Wide Window Cleaning - which earned the building's window-washing contract two years ago - had not been returned Friday night.

Calls to the Tractel Group - the contractor that installed the scaffolding - were also not returned.

No violations have been issued in the accident. A spokesman for the Solow Management Corp. issued a statement last night pledging its cooperation with investigators.

With Alison Gendar

The worker who fell to his death

The worker who fell to his death while clearing snow at the IDS Tower leaves behind a wife and two daughters.

By Chao Xiong, Star Tribune


Fidel Danilo Sanchez-Flores was unusually quiet Tuesday night, telling his wife he loved her and would continue to love her after death.

"I said, 'Why do you say that?'" Vielka Molinar recalled Thursday. "He said, 'I don't know.'"

Molinar felt uneasy on her way to work as a nurse Wednesday morning. The worry grew when her husband didn't answer his phone that afternoon.

It wasn't until about 7 p.m. that she heard from authorities: Her husband was clearing snow off the glass roof of the IDS Tower's Crystal Court about 2 p.m. when he broke through a panel, fell approximately four stories into the building and died.

"He left," a weary Molinar said Thursday. "And he didn't come back home, and he never will come back home."

The Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the fall. It was unclear Thursday what caused the accident in downtown Minneapolis' popular shopping and office tower. Sanchez-Flores, 52, of West St. Paul was working for sub-contractor Columbia Building Services. No one else was injured.

Sanchez-Flores was wearing a harness, said Jim Durda, vice president and general manager of Inland American Office Management LLC, which manages the IDS Center. Workers on the roof are required to secure themselves and their tools to hooks on the structure via a "lifeline," Durda said. It's unclear if that safety precaution was taken.

Sanchez-Flores was familiar with his job's risks and never expressed concerns about safety, his widow said.

"He was a very happy person," Molinar said, recalling how he liked to barbecue and play basketball with their 16-year-old daughter.

Sanchez-Flores and Molinar grew up together in Panama. His wife said he moved to the United States in 1976 and served in the Marine Corps for about 12 years. He lived in New York for about 15 years and Puerto Rico for a year, doing construction work in both places. He joined his family in Minnesota last year.

Molinar said her husband started working for Columbia Building Services this spring. The company's website said it provides building maintenance in the Twin Cities, specializing in window cleaning and snow removal. Company representatives did not return messages left Thursday.

Durda said Columbia has been cleaning the IDS Center for more than 35 years without incident.

However, in 1999 a 6,000-pound motorized window-washer lift operated by the company slid off a downtown Minneapolis sidewalk and crashed onto two taxi cabs. The worker on board leapt off the machine and broke a wrist and hurt his neck. No one else was hurt.

In 2004, the company was cited for a "non-serious" violation for failing to provide window washers with a device that measures wind velocities, state records show. Workers, stranded on a 40-story building in strong winds, were rescued.

James Honerman, spokesman for Minnesota OSHA, said it could take "quite some time" before OSHA issues an official report on Sanchez-Flores' death. His widow said she isn't laying blame at this point. Her grief is too overwhelming.

"I see him walking around with a big smile, just joking," she said. "He enjoyed life."

He is also survived by a second daughter and two grandchildren.

Curtain rising on glass walls

Stephen Weir
Special to the Star



Is the curtain set to come down on the traditional, aluminum-framed condo window? Is a new industrial style about to eliminate condominium owners' two biggest pains in the glass – moisture and mould?

Toronto is about to find out as several highrise project designers have decided that ultra-expensive curtain wall glass is the chic way to let light in and keep water out.

Windows come in many tints, shapes and sizes but almost all are installed using what builders call a window wall system: Glass goes into an aluminum frame which, in turn, is attached to the inside of a building's outer walls. Although relatively cheap to build, mount and repair, a poorly installed window wall can allow damaging moisture into a condo unit.

For residential projects where money is not a significant concern, floor-to-ceiling suite windows appear ready to make concrete outer walls obsolete.

Four soon-to-be-built projects – the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, the Yann Weymouth-designed 77 Charles St. West project, The Florian and the Four Seasons Residences in Yorkville– will hang their windows onto the frames of their buildings using an industrial glass system known as the curtain wall.

"Up to this point, almost every condo in the city has used some form of the tried-and-true window wall," says Darius Rybak, the project manager for 77 Charles St. West. "But when you look at the office towers in Toronto's downtown core, you see that glass is everything. Those 10- and 12-foot-tall windows look strikingly different than what you get in a condo residence. That is because the office towers don't put their windows inside a wall, they use glass to become the wall ... hence the term curtain-wall system. We are taking that industrial concept and using it in our next downtown project."

The 77 Charles St. condos, designed by architect Weymouth who made a name for himself designing the Paris Louvre's glass pyramid, are an artsy venture in waiting. Once the existing four-storey Lycée Français private school has been shut down and the site cleared, Rybak will oversee the construction of the 16-storey multi-use structure for Aspen Ridge Homes.

At street level, the new building will blend in with the University of Toronto neighbourhood. The first three floors are limestone, with understated doors and traditional windows. This will be home to Kintore College, a small religious residence and educational centre.

On top of this heavy-looking structure will be a stacked, seemingly transparent 13-storey all-glass tower. The condos inside will range from 1,200-square-feet lower-level suites, to 6,000-square-feet penthouse units. No price has been announced for the top floor, but the rest range from a reported $1.2 million to $6 million.

This will be a radically different-looking glass-wrapped condo in a part of Toronto where windows are making an exotic statement. Just a half a block away is Daniel Libeskind's controversial Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum.

"Our curtain wall will use large sections of glass which will give total vision to each floor," Rybak says. "The individual units of glass will be five-feet-wide by four-feet-high. The suites we have are 10 feet from floor to ceiling, while the penthouse will have 12-foot ceilings."

Because the glass is not supporting any weight (aside from its own dead load) the height and width of the glass is considerably larger than traditional windows.

"This type of system is probably about three times more expensive than a window wall. The thing is we aren't making more money on this – we are providing a high-end product – we call it our jewel."

Ignoring the cost of the curtain wall, the system will save money for homeowners over time. It is designed to block air and water from being pushed inside by heavy winds. It also puts a stop to outward air leakage, saving on heating and cooling costs.

"Water, be it windblown rain or snow, can get into a suite through the window. It could take years, but when there is moisture behind drywall the danger of mould is real," says Richard Tucker, director of construction for Graywood Developments Ltd, the company building the 53-storey Residence of the Ritz-Carlton. "From a practical sense, a curtain wall eliminates the worry of warranty claims that other buildings face because of mould and moisture damage."

Window-washing firms are probably already in an advanced frenzied stage of salvation as they impatiently wait for the new Ritz-Carlton hotel and condominium tower on Wellington St. (kitty-corner from Roy Thomson Hall) to be completed. The structure will use a curtain wall system that might, at first glance, make one think of a giant terrarium turned on its side.

"The benefit of the curtain wall is that the residents and hotel guests get a superior product," Tucker says. "We won't start hanging the windows until well on in the building process, but once we start the glass will go on rather quickly – I think we can do a floor a day."

The Ritz is working with Sota Glass in Brampton. The company, owned by Juan Speck, designs and exports the Canadian-designed curtain walls to large-scale projects worldwide. Most of the customers are builders of large office towers, but already in other cities developers are finding that the market for high-end condos will bear the added cost of the curtain wall.

"There isn't (an) off-the-rack curtain wall. They have to be custom-built to take into account (the shape and slope of the building)" Tucker says. "We will, of course, order extras in case of breakage."

Earlier reports said the Ritz-Carlton would use a tinted glass. That apparently is not the case; the hotel and condo is going au natural.

"Tinted windows are so very much a look of the '90s," Tucker says. "Even a slight colour clouds the view. The Ritz-Carlton will be installing haze-free, crystal-clear glass."

Living hundreds of feet above the city with only two sheets of glass between you and the pavement, does one have to worry about accidentally banging into a window and falling out?

"This is tough glass, similar to what is already in place at the new Four Seasons (Centre for the Performing Arts) opera house. It might be transparent, but it is double-paned and industrial strength. (It is built to withstand gale-force winds.)," Tucker says.

Of greater concern for many, likely, will be getting used to living in a glass home. Standing in front of a window that doesn't even appear to be there, 40 storeys above a city that never sleeps, may make condo owners feel on display. But that is why designers invented curtains in the first place.

Fabrication debris, metal scrapers don't mix

By Matt Slovick, editor in chief, Glass Magazine

During a presentation at Glass Performance Days in Finland this past June, a newspaper story was shown that stated 75 percent of the glass units at the University of Saskatchewan Spinks addition had to be replaced at a cost of $200,000 because of scratches during post-construction cleanup. The presentation discussed the problem of scratches when metal scrapers hit fabrication debris on glass.

In a nutshell, the glass industry says not to clean glass with scrapers because they can scratch the glass that has hard-to-see fabrication debris; the window cleaners say the scraper is their tool of choice and the scratches are caused by the fabrication debris and not the scraper.

Window cleaners also say fabricators should be following manufacturing guidelines with respect to maintaining their tempering equipment, which would be a huge step in resolving this issue. However, following those guidelines does not eliminate fabricating debris because of the nature of the process, according to those in the glass industry.

I’ve talked to people in the glass industry and the window cleaning business and continue to conduct interviews. The full story will appear in a future issue of Glass Magazine. In the meantime, excerpts have been published in the past two e-glass weekly newsletters.

Higher-performance tinted and coated glasses have been developed during the past decade, leading to more demand for them. Thus, as the making of glass has evolved, the methods of cleaning the glass generally have not.

I understand both points of view, and I hear the frustration in their voices. The scratching is hurting both industries. Many customers are not satisfied. Glass needs to be replaced. Lawsuits are filed.

Simply stating “don’t use scrapers” or “improve the quality of the glass” isn’t solving the problem that continues to exist. I talked to one window cleaner who is using powders and paint-thinner type solutions to clean glass without a scraper. It takes his cleaners more time and is more expensive, but the scratching is not occurring. And that saves money in court costs and replacement costs.

I found a quote recently that seems to fit perfectly in this scenario: “You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be in business tomorrow.”

Testing tries to ensure that glass structures don't court disaster

Look at a glass-clad building, and it's hard not to think the worst: What if there's a major earthquake or some other disaster?

The same question has occurred to architects, developers and building inspectors - which is why the wall systems for towers are tested extensively before construction begins.

"There's always the anticipation something can go wrong," said Ben Zelazny, a project manager at Benson Industries. The company fabricates curtain wall systems, the panels attached to the structural bones of high-rises. Benson is installing the curtain wall at 555 Mission St., a 33-story tower now on the rise.

For 555 Mission, testing was done at Construction Consulting Laboratory in Ontario (San Bernardino County), one of the nation's handful of accredited testing centers. Benson shipped the pieces for a two-story, 40-foot-wide set of panels; it also sent workers to assemble the mock-up and attach it to a metal frame inside a pressurized chamber.

The inspections begin with a check for gaps in how the panels are sealed, flaws that would allow heat or cooled air to leak from the building. Then comes the first hard-core test: a "rain rack" - a metal scaffold that's like an enormous sprinkler - is rolled into place. It drenches the wall for 15 minutes, followed by an inspection for leaks.

Next, an airplane engine is placed behind the rain rack and turned on, blasting the panels to see if their design can withstand the maximum wind forces, based on environmental studies of its height and location, and not leak.

The most important test - at least from California's perspective - involves what is called "seismic racking."

The frame to which the wall section is attached begins to move - the horizontal beam in the middle of the frame shifting back and forth, in and out, up and down.

The first round simulates a moderate earthquake, followed by another shot of sprinklers and a close inspection. Everything should slide back into place as if nothing had happened.

When the test resumes, the racking picks up force. Gyrations push several inches in each direction: The force is supposed to simulate an earthquake that's 150 percent greater than the maximum that seismologists anticipate in a given location.

This time, the panels aren't expected to stay airtight.

The gauge of success is whether they stay in one piece.

"Nothing can fall off the building - that's the easiest way to describe it," Zelazny said. "Joints can come apart, you can see through the mullions, but everything should still be attached. ... A panel should fail the way you want it to fail."

And if glass does break, whether the culprit is an earthquake or a crane from an errant window-washing unit? Towers have heat-strengthened glass, so it won't shatter into sharp shards; either there's a spiderweb effect with the pieces holding in place, or it crumples in a manner similar to an automobile window.

From assembly to certification, the testing process can take two weeks - "and that's if the testing is pretty successful," Zelazny said.

Some homeowners leaving holiday lighting to professionals

Holiday lights are fun to watch, but stringing them along roofs and trees can be a chore.

Some company's like Shine Holiday Lighting will do the sometimes tedious job — for a fee.

"We typically do 2 or 3 a day. We are booked through the middle of December," owner Chris Fisher told WZZM-TV.

As his window washing business slowed after the summer, Fisher decided to find something to do during the colder months. Now, he strings lights at homes across West Michigan.

Fisher's crew is putting up lights on an Ada Township home, about eight miles east of Grand Rapids, where the owner wants half to be LED.

"Then, at the end of the season, we'll come back take all the lights down, store it until next Christmas and pull them out and hang them up again," he said.

A small stringing job costs a minimum of $350. The price is $6,000 to $8,000 for an executive house and $15,000 for very large jobs.

Move targets squeegee kids

Squeegee kids on busy street corners could be driven away by new provincial legislation introduced today.

The issue has been a growing concern at city hall, where the request for a Safe Streets Act was made more than two years ago.

The biggest population of squeegee kids in Halifax is at the Willow Tree, the five-pronged intersection that marries Quinpool and Bell roads with Robie and Cogswell streets.

But other pockets of panhandlers have been cropping up on Bayers Road and Connaught Avenue, the area councillor said Thursday.

"It’s intrusive for our motorists for them to be there," Coun. Sue Uteck (Northwest Arm-South End) said in an interview.

"But it’s gotten to the point where the boulevards are ruined, fights have broken out, and motorists are being screamed at and their windshields pounded on. It’s enough."

As a result, the councillor says she’s "thrilled" that the province is finally moving ahead on a request introduced by regional council in June 2005.

At the time, Halifax was eyeing provinces like British Columbia and Ontario where violators can be fined up to $115. If someone becomes a persistent threat, he or she could wind up in jail.

The councillor, who represents downtown Halifax, said street-side panhandling has really become an issue over the last few years.

And while Coun. Dawn Sloane isn’t privy to the government’s proposal, she says she’s looking forward to seeing something put in place.

"People are concerned because they are dashing out in front of cars, walking around in traffic and that is unsafe.

"We tell our children not to do it, yet we see adults doing it all the time."

Thursday’s speech from the throne said legislation will be introduced to "make our streets safer by dealing with crosswalk safety, soliciting on public roadways and street racing."

Transportation Minister Murray Scott said he has several amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act he plans to introduce this morning, but didn’t want to give any details Thursday.

"I’m concentrating my efforts now on less distractions for drivers, (and I) also want to talk about education of drivers and pedestrians," he said at Province House.

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil said the Tories are ignoring the reason why squeegee kids are there in the first place.

"We’ll be pushing the government to deal with the real issue and that’s the issue of poverty and how we as a province move forward and handle it," the Grit said. Halifax’s anti-poverty coalition has said for years that Safe Street Laws have devastating effects on homeless people and the poor.

A squeegee kid at the Willow Tree Thursday afternoon said he’ll probably keep panhandling at the busy intersection even if it becomes illegal.

"I already have about $30,000 in fines from standing in traffic anyway," said Michael, who didn’t want to give his last name.

Intersections are "pretty much" the only place he can make any money, he said.

"When you are panhandling on the street, people don’t want to stop but here they have to."

Opposition Leader Darrell Dexter said the focus on squeegee kids is a strange priority for the government to have.

"There’s probably a couple of dozen of them in the city at best," he said.

"I think some people think of them as a nuisance. I don’t necessarily (see) them as any kind of a threat."

He questioned how much money would have to be spent on enforcement.

"What are they going to do, jail them? Fine them? They are poor people who are often on the margins of society," the NDP leader said.

Nanotechnology Research

A coating of fibers too small for the eye to see makes water droplets on a glass sheet act like marbles on a tabletop.

Tilt the glass, and the droplets roll off.

Flip the glass over, where the nanofibers have been treated with chemicals that attract water, and water droplets flatten, turning a foggy glass clear again.

"The chemistry and morphology control the properties of the surface," said Arthur J. Epstein, director of Ohio State University's Center for Materials Research.

Cool? Definitely. Practical? Getting there.

With the right chemicals, these microscopic lawns made up of plastic fibers can make coatings that can repel dirt or oil, or uncoil and hold DNA outstretched for study.

Fibers can conduct electricity and light up plastics. Buried under the skin, they could work as an artificial muscle.

The list goes on.

The research is in the growing field of nanotechnology, a science that manipulates materials at the molecular level to make everything from sun blocks to stain-resistant clothing.

At Ohio State, researchers have built nanoscaffolding on which to grow human tissue, developed a process to squeeze DNA down to a size that might be usable for gene therapy, found that nanoparticles injected in animals might help detect cancer early and begun to develop new materials to gather solar energy.

Epstein's former postdoctoral student Nan-Rong Chiou came up with a process that grows plastic nanofibers -- about one-500th of the width of human hair -- in a uniform pattern.

"Nobody realized you could do that," said Ric Kaner, a professor of inorganic chemistry, materials science and engineering at UCLA and a director of the California NanoSystems Institute.

"People have been trying to figure this out for a number of years."

Under a powerful microscope, the nanofibers resemble a putting green. Chiou mixed weak concentrations of aniline, a component of dyes used in Oriental carpets, with an oxidant called ammonium persulfate.

He dipped a plastic film into the solution, and polyaniline fibers grew on the surface. Polyaniline is a chain that links simple aniline molecules into a complex molecule.

The chemical reaction was halted when the film was rinsed in water. That's when he got his uniform pattern.

"Anything you can do to get them aligned and get them to grow where you want to is a significant advance," said Sanjeev Manohar, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Manohar has used plastic nanofibers that grow randomly to build tiny transistors. He expects the OSU research to be useful in his work.

"If you have a bunch of wires going one way instead of (resembling) spaghetti, the electronic transport is more efficient."

Kaner said the process holds a lot of promise.

"It's certainly effective scientifically. Whether it makes things cheaper and more accessible, it's hard for scientists to know."

Epstein, Chiou and others at Ohio State are doing more research and have found that they can coat almost any kind of material.

Glass treated with the hydrophobic -- not capable of uniting with or absorbing water -- coating could one day become self-cleaning windows.

With L. James Lee, a chemical and biomolecular engineering professor, the researchers have laid out patterns of hydrophilic and hydrophobic fibers that draw fluids through channels.

Epstein said if you put a light-emitting polymer on top of the nanofiber turf and connect the positive charge from a battery to the turf and the negative charge to the opposite end of the polymer, the device emits light using far less electricity than a traditional incandescent bulb or fluorescent tube.

Nanocoating also can be used to reduce static electricity. Epstein said that a walk across a carpet creates enough static electricity to shock us when we touch a doorknob. That can be reduced by coating a knob or even the soles of our shoes so that electrons are released into the atmosphere.

"You can change the properties so that you can conduct or insulate electricity under the skin, whichever is desired," said Chiou, who is now senior research and development manager for Nanomaterials Innovation Limited, a startup with Lee, with offices at OSU.

Chiou said he is particularly interested in medical uses, including artificial muscles.

When the researchers apply an electric charge to a film, one side can attract or repel ions from polymer fibers. The action changes the length of fibers. Shorten the fibers on one side, and the film curls like a closing fist. Lengthen them and the film extends, like a fist opening. The researchers must determine if the curling and opening action is strong enough to be useful.

The scientists have applied for a patent and expect to work with industry to further develop uses.

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices.

Security guards, window cleaners launch contract campaign

By Barb Kucera, Workday editor
11 November 2007
MINNEAPOLIS - Early this year the Justice for Janitors campaign helped thousands of Twin Cities workers attain family health coverage. Now security guards and window cleaners – who work in the same downtown buildings as the janitors – are mobilizing to improve their pay and benefits.

Under the theme "One Standard for All Building Service Workers," members of Service Employees International Union Local 26 officially launched their contract campaign Saturday at the Minneapolis Labor Center. They were joined by Local 26 janitors who conducted a highly visible and successful effort last winter.

"This movement is literally about organizing people out of poverty," Minneapolis City Council member Ralph Remington told the crowd.

Local 26 represents some 1,000 private security guards and window cleaners whose contracts expire Dec. 31. On Saturday, they approved contract goals that include higher wages, affordable health care, improved training and safety, job security and respect for diversity.

SEIU security guards
Members of the negotiating committee for security guards (above) and window cleaners represented by SEIU Local 26 cheer as the committees are announced.
SEIU window cleaners

A survey of the security guard members found that few could afford the family health insurance coverage offered by private security companies. Pay is so low, the union found, that one in 10 of the security guard members had been forced to file for bankruptcy.

John Graham, a security guard for the multinational Securitas, said the employee premium for the company's family health plan is $270 a week – adding up to more than half of what the average security guard earns in a year.

Retirement plans are small or non-existent, said Keith Pearl, window cleaner for another large corporation, Marsden. One cleaner who recently retired gets the grand sum of $150 a month, he said.

"All families in the Twin Cities deserve these things," said Harrison Bullard, a Viking security officer. "We must all stand together, security officers, janitors, window cleaners and all other working people in the Twin Cities and say that we need health care; we need fair wages; we need to be able to care for our families with dignity."

Like the Justice for Janitors campaign, which linked Twin Cities janitors with their counterparts across the country, the struggle for fair window cleaner and security guard contracts will also be a national effort, Local 26 President Javier Morillo said. Similar efforts are under way in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., he said.

"Our employers are national employers" and that means the union must coordinate across communities, he said. "Today's fight is not just about our contract. It's about organizing more workers . . . We know where we represent more workers, we are stronger at the table."

The Justice for Janitors campaign included several mass marches through the Minneapolis skyway system. The skyways will again be filled with the SEIU's signature purple for a march Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 11:30 a.m., starting at Minneapolis City Hall.

The union also plans a public forum Dec. 8 to put the spotlight on Hannon Security, a non-union company being investigated for possible racial and sexual discrimination. The Workers Interfaith Network will participate in the forum; no location has been set yet.

Neighbors unhappy with noise from business

By Jonathan Turner

ROCK ISLAND -- A neighborhood feud about a business in a residential zone erupted this week before the city council.

After more than four years of operating First Class Window Cleaning out of their home at 4314 28th Ave., Greg and Lisa Kerchner sought a special-use permit to continue operating under restrictions set by aldermen.

They have been operating 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and city staff recommended the business could gain a permit if hours started at 8 a.m. and/or employee vehicles parked off site.

In addition to the Kerchners, two employees work for the company - one of whom comes each morning to pick up a company truck. All the cleaning work is done off site, at 200 commercial clients and more than 300 residential clients around the Quad-Cities, including all local KFC, Hardee's and Taco Bell restaurants.

'We're open for whatever the council is happy with,' Mr. Kerchner said of the staff recommendation.

'The problem arises when you have employees coming into the neighborhood, picking up orders, leaving at all hours of the day and night, and disturbing the peace of the neighborhood,' said Dick Hollenback, who lives next door.

'Our rights have been violated in the last four years,' he said, noting there are many elderly residents on the block. Mr. Hollenback is 76 and still works as a Realtor.

'Did I not earn the right to live in a quiet, peaceful, residential neighborhood?' he asked. 'Apparently not.'

'It is very frustrating to be jolted from a deep sleep as early as 4 a.m., when his workers come to pick up the trucks, rev motors, slam truck doors and transfer equipment and/or supplies from one truck to another,' Mr. Hollenback wrote in a four-page complaint letter to the city.

'It is apparent Mr. Kerchner has no respect for his neighbors,' he wrote. 'I have listed our home for sale. We can no longer tolerate this man and his actions.'

Neighbor John Justice, who got into an argument with Mr. Kerchner one time after being awoken at 4 a.m., said the business is not in character with the neighborhood. There already is limited parking on the street and the business trucks reduce that further, Mr. Justice said.

Greg Klema, another neighbor, wrote that Mr. Kerchner 'is not, nor has he ever been a good neighbor. He has aggravated the Hollenbacks to the point of putting their retirement home up for sale. If Mr. Kerchner is allowed this permit, I too will probably be looking for new residence, and it will not be in Rock Island.'

'I just don't trust him,' Mr. Klema told the council, claiming Mr. Kerchner parks his trucks in front of neighbors' homes and on nearby yards. If he parked the vehicles somewhere else, the neighbors could get along with a home office, Mr. Klema said.

'I've been woke up a couple of mornings,' he said. 'He has a propensity for slamming doors all the time, moving the ladders.'

'We give heavy consideration to what the neighbors' concerns are, to prevent the kind of disturbances these neighbors raise,' Mayor Mark Schwiebert said of special-use permits in general. A 5 a.m. start time in a residential area 'could be pretty offensive,' he said.

Mr. Kerchner had rented another location to store the trucks, but said it was costing the business too much. He hasn't pursued other storage options since then.

'My wife takes care of the billing and office duties, and she has everything at home,' he said. 'To have a storefront would just be an unnecessary expense for my business. We don't need a storefront to draw business. We draw business by referrals. We don't advertise.'

Ald. Chuck Austin, 7th Ward, said the council should try to meet the concerns of neighbors and the business. If they can't park trucks off the street, it's incumbent on the business to find another place to store them and for employees to meet for work, he said.

'When we look at a special-use permit, we take into consideration the neighbors and the feelings of the neighbors,' said Ald. Joy Murphy, 6th Ward. 'It's very important you rally your neighbors in your defense.'

Mr. Kerchner expanded his driveway to allow more vehicles to park there, rather than on the street. One employee doesn't typically start until after 8 a.m., he said.

Starting everyone at 8 might hinder some of the restaurants they serve, Mrs. Kerchner said. They require the cleaning crew to be done before they open, which is usually at 10:30, she said.

'We could do it. It would just make it harder on us,' Mrs. Kerchner said. 'It is doable.'

Ald. Murphy also encouraged them to find a business location to store their trucks and proposed denial of the permit.

Ald. Austin asked that the denial be deferred for two weeks to allow the Kerchners time to find alternate arrangements. That motion was approved 4-3, so the issue will be brought back to council at its Nov. 19 meeting.

Halloween with Spider-Man and Venom in downtown Madison

Spider-Man and his arch-nemesis Venom were spotted swinging around downtown Madison yesterday, perched on the glassy sides of the new office building at Main and Pinckney streets on Capitol Square. For just one day, the pair set aside their differences and focused on the task at hand of washing windows. As would be expected on the eve of Halloween, they were a hit with the pedestrians passing by all day long.

Inside the superhero and supervillain costumes were Pat Roper and Jeff Henderson, respectively, who regularly work cleaning the buildings on Block 89 while balancing on the end of a rope. On October 30, though, they decided to have some fun in the spirit of Halloween.

"Everybody calls us Spider-Man on the job," says Henderson once he's back on the sidewalk, "so we just decided it would be a nice idea to dress up in these costumes." He notes that people shot photos of the pair all day long, not only from the sidewalks but from inside the bank building as well. A dozen photos of the pair scaling its glass face can be viewed in the gallery above.

The sight was Halloween as it should be, a flash of the unexpected that makes perfect sense once you stop and look at it. Set aside all of the hype over State Street, countless parties, trick-or-treating, and seasonal store displays only a day away from installing St. Nick, this was the holiday at its most basic, a simple transgression of the ordinary that cracks smiles and gets people talking.

"This is the first time we've done this," declares Henderson, "but it won't be the last."

Newscaster Interupted by Window Cleaner

Drought Threatens Window Cleaners

Hosepipe law could threaten window cleaners

By Graham Tibbetts
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/10/2007

The livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of window cleaners could be threatened by a tough new hosepipe law, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Under a Government proposal to tackle future droughts, it would be illegal to use hosepipes for a number of activities, from filling swimming pools to cleaning windows.

Up to half the nation's estimated 400,000 window cleaners have recently dispensed with the traditional bucket and sponge in favour of a ladder-free system of poles which relies on hosepipes.
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Andrew Lee, vice-chairman of the Federation for Window Cleaners, said: "It's going to be disastrous if we are included in the ban. I can't encourage people to break the law but that's what these boys are going to be faced with."

The concern follows moves by the Government to update the 62-year-old drought legislation, which only restricts the use of hosepipes for watering gardens and washing cars.

The new law would allow water companies to enforce a "discretionary use" ban, outlawing virtually all domestic activities involving hosepipes.

Window cleaners, under pressure from health and safety legislation which discourages the use of ladders, have been converting their businesses to water-fed poles.

The cleaners fill a tank in their van with mains water via a hosepipe.

The water is piped from the van to a brush on the end of the pole, allowing cleaners to wash windows up to 60ft high without ladders.

Mr Lee, who has a business in Cumbria, said many cleaners had spent around £15,000 upgrading to the new system.

"To go down the water-fed pole route you're looking at a Transit van with a 650-litre tank that has to be fitted.

Then you've got poles that cost £1,000 apiece. A lot of people have taken out loans to finance the transition," he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs confirmed that water-fed poles would be covered by a hosepipe ban under the law but said: "Window cleaners could still revert to a bucket and sponge."

Window Cleaner Falls To His Death...

The Cumberland Police Department was called to the 500 block of N. Centre Street today at approximately 11:43 am for a subject that had reportedly fallen from a ladder. The Cumberland Fire Department transported the individual to Western Maryland Health System’s Memorial Campus where he was pronounced dead. A witness had observed the subject on the ladder, cleaning windows, and slip off a top rung, falling to the pavement. The investigation was turned over to C3I as a matter of policy, but no foul play is suspected. The name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Man still busy after 6 decades in Window Washing business

Mayor John Jenkins joined those honoring Palman, saying, "Your outstanding and unwavering service allows us to see our community with clear vision."

"Do you take apprentices?" added the mayor. "I'm looking for a new job."

One of Palman's admirers read a poem honoring him. It said in part, "he inspires us all to do our jobs for as long and as well as we can."

"I just hope this is me you're talking about," joked Palman. "I'm kind of overwhelmed."

Palman, who now limits his washing to first-floor windows, said he has no intention to retire.

"I've had a lot of fun over the years," he said. "You meet the nicest people."

Home Spray Cleaners Could Make YOU Cough

Home Spray Cleaners Could Raise Asthma Risk Spritzing just once a week boosted odds by 50%, study found By Serena Gordon FRIDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Using household cleaning sprays and spray air fresheners just once a week can increase your risk of developing asthma, new research suggests.

Whether or not the cleaning products are a direct cause of asthma, or simply a trigger for people who already have the disease, isn't clear from this epidemiological study. However, the European team involved in the study believes that spray cleaners can be a cause of new-onset asthma, because the people included in this study did not have asthma or asthma symptoms at the start of the study.The use of spray cleaners as little as once a week increased the risk of developing the respiratory ailment by nearly 50 percent, the researchers found.

"Cleaning sprays, especially air fresheners, furniture cleaners and glass cleaners, had a particularly strong effect. The risk of developing asthma increased with the frequency of cleaning and number of different sprays used, but on average was 30 to 50 percent higher in people regularly exposed to cleaning sprays than in others," said the study's lead author, Jan-Paul Zock, a research fellow at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research in Barcelona, Spain. Results of the study were expected to be published in the second

Nanofibers to Create Self-Cleaning Windows

A group of Ohio State University scientists, headed by Dr. Arthur J. Epstein, found that fibers of different heights and diameters can be used to engineer materials with different properties. The scientists also discovered how exposing the fibers to different chemicals can change the fiber's behavior. The findings from this research project may have a variety of potential applications, including the production of self-cleaning surfaces, transparent electronic devices, and biomedical tools that manipulate strands of DNA.
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Scholar Nan-Rong Chiou places a drop of water on a plastic surface covered with microscopic fibers. Photo by Jo McCulty, courtesy of Ohio State University
Scholar Nan-Rong Chiou places a drop
of water on a plastic surface covered
with microscopic fibers
(Credit: Ohio State University)
The Ohio State University group succeeded in growing nano-scaled Polyaniline fibers on surfaces.
The fibers, which are not visible with the naked eye, can dramatically alter the properties of the surface on which they are grown, resulting in many new and exciting applications. The diameters of the tips of the nanofibers can be controlled within a 10nm-40nm range, and the length can be controlled within a 70nm-360nm range. Using nanofibers, the group developed different kinds of surfaces - some are water-repellent, some attract water, and some even repel oil and dirt. Windows made in this way could stay cleaner for much longer periods of time, as dirt will not stick to them. On the other hand, water attracting surfaces could be used as anti-fog coating (useful for car windshields and windows), seeing as the attraction of the water drops to the surface will cause them to flatten over it uniformly.

A very different application of these fibers could be in DNA interaction research. The scientists put droplets of water containing DNA on a water-attracting surface and found that the DNA strands uncoiled. Epstein said to the Ohio State University Press that scientists could use the fibers as a platform for studying how DNA interacts with other molecules. They could also use the spread-out DNA to build new nanostructures.

A scanning electron microscope image of plastic dots deposited on a sheet of transparent film (Credit: Ohio State University)
A scanning electron microscope
image of plastic dots deposited
on a sheet of transparent film
(Credit: Ohio State University)
Another application has to do with transparent plastic electronic devices. Much of the research conducted by Epstein focuses on polymers that conduct electricity, which in the process of conducting electricity light up or change colors. Depending on the choice of polymer, the nano-fiber surface can also conduct electricity. The researchers were able to use the surface to charge an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), an achievement that may pave the way for transparent plastic electronic devices.

TFOT recently covered a different research project that was conducted in the Gent University in Belgium. The findings from the Belgian research product may enable production of electronic devices that are not only transparent but are also stretchable and washable. On another related issue, Sony recently announced it will start selling the first commercial OLED-based TVs in Japan this December.

Window Cleaner Jailed

Matthew Taylor Saturday October 13, 2007 The Guardian Two men jailed for the rape of young girls had their prison sentences doubled by the court of appeal yesterday after judges agreed with the attorney general, Lady Scotland, that their original jail terms had been "unduly lenient". Window cleaner Keith Fenn and chef Simon Foster had both been sentenced to two years for the rape of girls aged 10 and 12 respectively. But yesterday appeal court judges in London gave both men new sentences of four years following an appeal brought by the attorney general. Article continues Yesterday the court heard that Fenn had been sentenced in June at Oxford crown court after admitting two charges of rape. He said he had genuinely believed the girl was 16 after she approached him and a friend and asked them for a cigarette. Foster was jailed at Exeter crown court - also in June - after he admitted a series of sexual offences against a 12-year-old girl, including two counts of rape. The appeal judges were told that both girls, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared older than their years. Lord Justice Latham told the court: "A child under 13 cannot give consent in law to any sexual activity. And the offender's belief in the age of the child, even if reasonably held, is irrelevant."

Threatened by a squeegee?

By JESSICA SAVAGE
The Lufkin Daily News

A Lufkin police officer arrested a man Sunday at a gas station after the man allegedly threatened two women with a squeegee and stabbed the officer with a pen, according to a Lufkin Police arrest report.

The officer tackled Johnny Flynn Lewis, 45, in front of Chevron, 804 N. Timberland Drive, after asking Lewis to drop the rubber-edged blade, the report stated. A squeegee, a long rubber-edged blade, is typically used for window cleaning at gas stations.

"(Lewis) was standing in the parking lot swinging a squeegee. (He) was observed to be in an aggressive stance, facing two black females and hollering at them," the report stated.

As the officer took Lewis to the ground, Lewis allegedly stabbed him in the right arm with a ballpoint pen he had in hand, the report stated.

Lewis was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a public servant — a third-degree felony offense.

WIndow Cleaner Around The World In 80 Ways

By Kim Murphy

GREENWICH, England - He was a young man then. Fresh out of the University of London, Jason Lewis was running his own window-cleaning business and playing in a grunge rock band when his friend, Stevie Smith, was struck by the terrifying thought that the prime of his life would turn out to be less than it should.

“What I see, day after day, are captured lives, half-lives, dedicated to a mirage of fullness that never comes,” Smith would explain later. “My greatest fear is of mediocrity and of a slow, unremarkable acquiescence to society.”

“Come with me around the world,” Smith told Lewis. “We'll (circumnavigate) the globe like Magellan did riding the wind, but we'll do it under our own power: by bicycle, pedal boat, kayak, skates and our own remarkable feet.”

“When do we start?” Lewis replied.

The answer to that question was July 12, 1994.

One of them finished Saturday, more than 13 years later, but it wasn't Smith.

Leather-faced, thin, weeping and now 40, Lewis pedaled his boat up the River Thames to the Prime Meridian in Greenwich - 46,405 miles later and exactly to the spot where he and Smith had started. Smith, who dropped out five years into the journey, stood back quietly among the cheering spectators, jostled by the TV camera crews.

Along the way, Lewis capsized in two oceans, was chased by a 17-foot crocodile in Australia, suffered from two bouts of malaria, underwent surgery for two hernias, nearly died of blood poisoning 1,300 miles out to sea from Hawaii, stumbled upon a civil war in the Solomon Islands, suffered acute altitude sickness while biking over the Himalayas, got hit by a car and suffered fractures to both legs in Colorado, was robbed in Sumatra at the point of a machete and arrested as a spy in Egypt.

He sold T-shirts and did odd jobs to raise money, and then kept going. He fell in love, but said goodbye and kept going.

“Thirteen years, coming to an end. It's been a big, long journey. It's good to be back,” Lewis said simply as he pushed his 26-foot-long pedal boat, now resting on a trailer, across the famous cobblestone courtyard outside the Greenwich Royal Observatory.

Although it is still in dispute, Lewis and his Expedition 360 team believe it to be the first true human-powered circumnavigation of the globe, a voyage that spanned 37 countries, both north and south of the equator, and ended at Greenwich, 0 degree longitude, where Earth's time zones begin.

Before Lewis left Greenwich 13 years, two months and 23 days ago, he had spent a total of three days crewing on a sailboat and had ridden no more than three miles at a time on a bicycle.

He and Smith crossed the English Channel, bicycled to the Portuguese coast; spent 111 days crossing the Atlantic to Miami in the pedal boat (at a speed of 2 to 4 knots) and spent a year roller-skating across the U.S., where Lewis was waylaid for several months in Colorado recuperating from the car accident.

They set off early in 1997 by bicycle for South America, intending to cross from Peru to Australia. They made it as far as Honduras, but unfavorable currents forced them to reverse thousands of miles to San Francisco and pedal to Hawaii first.

It was in Hawaii, five years into the journey, that a no-longer-aching-for-adventure Smith threw in the towel.

Lewis kept going. While later he would bring in occasional crew members on various legs to help, he pedaled alone for 72 days across the Pacific.

“I just let the boat drift when I was sleeping,” he said, which caused a problem when he ran into countercurrents near the equator.

“I'd pedal in the day and go to sleep, and wake up in the same space where I started the previous day,” he said. “That was probably the most demoralizing part of the whole expedition.”

He arrived in Australia $40,000 in debt and spent more than three years fundraising and working with local schools while traversing the outback by bicycle.

Lewis then pedaled his boat to southeast Asia; bicycled through China and eastern Tibet to India; took his boat to Djibouti in east Africa; bicycled and kayaked through Africa and Turkey; and bicycled to France, before setting out one last time on the pedal boat to cross the English Channel and up the Thames.

He does windows, gladly

From the top of the eight-story Presidents Place office building on Hancock Street, one of the tallest structures in Quincy, the view was outstanding: Boston on the horizon, the buildings of the historic city all around.

Dan McHugh didn't see that. His view was the window just inches from his face. Hanging by what, to the uninitiated, looked like a thread - but was really a well-secured bosun's chair on ropes - he focused on the task at hand: Soap the windows, one by one, and deftly squeegee them clean.

"When you're up there, it gives you time to think, really think," he said. "There's nothing else to do but wash windows and think."

McHugh is part of a little-noticed window-washing workforce that, if you look up, can be seen dangling high over the bustling commerce of our region. It may not be the most people's first job choice - just watching can make one's heart race and palms sweat - but McHugh loves it.

He came to the profession by chance. When he was in his 20s and working at a mall, he ran into someone who was a window washer, and was inspired to "give it a try."

Nine years later McHugh is still at it, working for Robert Lang, owner of LA Window Cleaning in Stoughton, a company that cleans windows from Rhode Island to New Hampshire. "This is the only business where you start at the top, and work your way down," quips Lang.

McHugh said he doesn't get scared by the heights he commands. In fact, he gets the occasional adrenalin rush from pushing his bosun's chair over the edge of the building, climbing in and scaling down to do a job not a lot of people do, or would want to.

Still, there are moments of fear - such as the time, while working at another company, that his improperly locked chair slipped and he fell a short distance before his safety rope caught.

"That was a little scary," he said. "My heart was racing the rest of the day."

One recent sunny and wind-free day - the latter being the more important - McHugh lowered himself smoothly off the Presidents Place roof, swabbed a window and wiped it clean, moving down to the next.

On a typical job, he does one vertical row at a time, takes the elevator back up, moves his gear over a row and down he goes again.

Working under an overhang poses a special challenge. McHugh has to swing in under it, bang a handle with double suction cups to the window, hold it to pull himself in, and use his one free hand to clean. It's not easy.

So what do window washers see on the job? After all, they're outside and people are in there doing . . . whatever people do in there.
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"Believe me, we've seen things no one wants to see," Lang said, telling a couple of funny but largely unprintable stories, not naming names or job sites.

Discretion is clearly required. "At places like MIT, you might see and hear things but you're sworn to secrecy," said Lang. He's also done Billy Bulger's Boston office and a building next to the players' parking lot at Fenway Park.

What McHugh does looks dangerous, but it is safer than it was a few years ago. In 2001, the window-cleaning industry developed an American National Safety Standard for Window Cleaning Safety, said Stefan Bright, safety director of the International Window Cleaners Association, a group of 650 member companies
It spelled out the responsibilities of window-washing companies, from the efficiency of the gear they use, to the need for building owners to ensure their roofs have adequate tie-downs for washers to use.

Gone are the days of looping ropes over anything handy on a roof, Lang said.

"Going back 10 to 20 years, the industry was averaging 18-22 fatalities a year," Bright said. "Since 2001, we've seen a dramatic decrease to eight to 12 a year."

Compare that with how many times people like McHugh swing over a roof to dangle down to their job. Bright's group estimates that nearly 2.5 million times a year, up to 10,000 window cleaners go off a roof in this country to keep the views pristine for those on the inside.

Lang's company, which began in 1991 and has not had a fatal accident, does not use what is known as "swing scaffolding" lowered down on pulleys from a roof. Rather, it favors bosun's chairs, and hydraulic booms with bucket seats. Ladders are used but not preferred, since they are considered most dangerous.

"Me, I'd rather do a chair than a ladder any day," said McHugh.

For the record, the soapy substance his company mostly uses isn't exactly super-expensive stuff. "Dawn dishwashing detergent works the best," said Lang.

Being a window washer opens one up to comments from passers by. Hearing "Hey, you missed a spot," is a common refrain.

The most oft-asked question is, "What do you do when you gotta go to the bathroom?' The answer: "You try to go before you go, just like you tell your kids before you leave on vacation," says Lang.

The work is largely seasonal; McHugh usually gets laid off a month or two in winter, collects unemployment and relaxes until warm weather and dirty windows on big buildings beckon his return.

He says he will continue the work as long as his body holds out, and then might look at the management side of the business. But for now, he'll keep slinging his swing over the sides of buildings. It has its advantages.

"Sometimes," he says, "I'll just turn the chair around and lean back on the building and look."

Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at kandarian@globe.com.
(not an actual picture of Dan McHugh)

Trust to axe hospital window cleaning

By Tristan Kirk


A LOCAL hospital will not be cleaning its windows this year in a bid to save money.

The North West Hospitals NHS Trust plans to save £80,000 this year by cutting window cleaning services at Northwick Park Hospital, in Northwick Park. It wants to use money to improve services at the hospital.

Sarah McKellar, spokesman for the trust, said: "The design of the building and the sheer number of windows means that to clean them all would cost the trust in the region of £80,000. We have decided that this money would be better invested in patient care which needs to take priority at this time.
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"The trust is committed to improving the environment for patients, visitors and staff at Northwick Park Hospital.

We recognise there is still more to do and this includes cleaning all the windows at the hospital."

This saving is part of a £21million savings package, announced at the trust's annual general meeting on Wednesday, September 26.

Margaret Ashworth, director of finance for the trust, said: "We are not cutting services, we are not putting patient care at risk. No one here would do anything that would be to the detriment of patients.

"What are doing is looking at improving the services on offer, and being more efficient in what we do."

TORONTO, Canada—A sparkly new addition to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, completed this summer, is already posing problems, reports the Globe and Mail.

The structure, designed by Daniel Libeskind and called “the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal,” is 75 percent glass and features no right angles. The glass has leaked, and window-cleaning costs are rumored to have increased $200,000, while the slanted walls have posed several problems: visitors have wandered out onto slanted surfaces overlooking the street, or, in one case, run up a wall tipped at 30 degrees. The space has also proven difficult to install art and artifacts in. “Daniel didn't design this building based on the collections,” said Dan Rahimi, director of gallery development. “We had to design the collections to go with the building. We have an aesthetic imperative—partly because the architecture is so strong.

Fall Arrest

By: Neal Goldwyer

Published: 14 Sep 07 - 0:00

The rope access and fall arrest industry will be changing over to National Qualifications Framework (NQF) standards from October this year. This will also include separate standards for fall-arrest technicians.

“The Rope Access and Fall Arrest Association (Rafaa) is excited by these developments and the position it is taking in implementing them. It translates into higher levels of professionalism and enables Rafaa to play a leading role in the emerging international work-at-height industry,” Rafaa secretary Brian Tanner says.

Rafaa, formerly the South African Industrial Rope Access Association (Sairaa), was established in 2005 in a move to accommodate the particulars of the fall-arrest sector and to reflect the growth in the larger industry.

The body began the process of establishing South African Qualifications Authority- (Saqa-) recognised unit standards for rope access and fall arrest and, together with its approved providers, has since trained nearly 3 000 technicians to South African National Standards rope access standards over the last seven years.

One of a number of significant developments in the rope access and work-at-height industry, the migration to NQF-recognised standards follows the need for higher levels of professionalism among association members and a stronger presence by Rafaa in the industry.

Tanner adds that there are now eight unit standards in rope access and fall arrest registered on the NQF, owing to the involvement and support Rafaa has received from the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (Services Seta).

The Services Seta has made a discretionary grant of R1,5-million available to Rafaa for the purpose of recognising the prior learning of individuals already working in the industry. This will provide people with the opportunity to demonstrate competence against the national standards.

“A number of additional processes are being implemented to enable the work-at-height industry to continue to use skills development as a way to enhance professionalism and safety in this growing industry,” he continues.

These processes include the development of learning material and assessment tools for the eight registered unit standards, the application for accreditation with the Services Seta by industry training providers, and the evaluation of Rafaa by the Services Seta as its certification partner in the work-at-height industry.

Rafaa is anticipating the outlined changes to be in place by October 2007. Thereafter, Rafaa will only certify learners who have been deemed competent against the national standards.

Rafaa’s predecessor, Sairaa, was founded in the 1980s by a score of parties active in the rope access industry, which developed out of an initiative by a number of Johannesburg rock climbers who used their climbing experience and equipment to clean windows on high-rise buildings.

Sairaa’s initial mandate was to create a forum for the growing local industry, to assist in the writing of the South African Bureau of Standards-approved standards and to fulfil a certification role for the training of technicians in accordance with these standards.

“During the 1990s, it became apparent that the young industry’s reliance on skills gained in recreational climbing [was] no longer a viable substitute for recognised standards,” Tanner explains.

“The challenge was to adapt our system to accommodate this growth without compromising the existing standards. At the same time, it made sense to align the training and certification system with the country’s developing NQF,” he adds.

Details of the new standards for rope access work are as follows:

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 2, Saqa No 230000 governs how to perform a limited range of rope access tasks and rescues.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a person referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 1 rope access technician.

Qualifying learners will be capable of preparing for rope access and assembling personal rope access equipment, explaining and tying basic rope knots, performing (under supervision) basic rope access manoeuvres and tasks safely on a prerigged double-rope system, performing basic rope access rescue manoeuvres (also under super- vision), and maintaining personal rope access equipment.

In addition to the above, learners must be in possession of a medical certificate declaring them free from a condition that may prevent them from working safely, physically fit, at least 18 years of age, as well as communication and mathematically literate at NQF Level 1.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 3, Saqa 229996 governs how to rig working ropes, undertake rescues and perform a range of rope access tasks

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a person referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 2 rope access technician.

Qualifying learners will be cap-able of rigging ropes for work and rescue situations, using relevant knots (under supervision), perform- ing rope access manoeuvres and tasks, performing rescues (under supervision), maintaining and inspecting rope access equipment, demonstrating knowledge of worksite organisation, and applying knowledge of the legal and safety requirements to different worksites.

Further, learners must have all the additional requirements as for Level 1 above, and be competent in a registered unit standard for first aid and for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 4, Saqa 230001 governs how to supervise rope access teams and perform advanced manoeuvres and rescues.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a supervisor, referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 3 rope access technician, who is capable of complete responsibility for work projects, able to demonstrate skills and knowledge of both levels 1 and 2, is conversant with relevant work techniques and legislation, and has comprehensive knowledge of advanced rescue techniques.

Qualifying learners will be capable of performing advanced rope access manoeuvres, performing advanced rescues from any position, organising a worksite in accordance with legal and safety requirements, organising worksites and work projects, and supervising rope access work teams.

In addition to the above, learners must be 21 years of age and have all the additional requirements as for Level 2 above.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 4, Saqa 229997 governs how to select equipment and rig ropes for rope access projects.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge that a Level 3 supervisor should have in addition to the above standard.

Qualifying learners will be capable of selecting equipment for a rope access project, explaining requirements for equipment inspections and storage, determining safe loads for rope access projects, and placing anchors and rig ropes for work and rescue situations.

Edited by: Laura Tyrer