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
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