San Francisco window washer survives 11-story fall from building

Nov. 22--The first inkling that office workers scurrying along Montgomery Street had that something was wrong came when they looked up to see a blue blur falling from the sky. Some thought it was debris -- but then it got closer, and the crowd began to scream and scatter. It was a man, plummeting 11 stories toward them.

With a thump and a crash of shattering glass, the middle-aged window washer smashed into a moving car just after 10 a.m. Friday morning. He lay wincing and miraculously alive for a moment on the crumpled roof of a green Toyota Camry, witnesses said, and then rolled off onto the pavement.

So a window washer just fell off a building and landed on this car outside my work

A photo posted by radiopadraic (@radiopadraic) on Nov 11, 2014 at 10:37am PST

That's when retired Army Col. Sam Hartwell and 19 others -- including the driver of the smashed car -- sprang into action. In moments, they had called 911, set up traffic blocks and banded around the man, some bending low to urge him to hold on, hoping he could survive until paramedics arrived.

Within two minutes of being called, firefighters were on the scene near the intersection of California Street, and the victim was soon on his way to San Francisco General Hospital -- alive, though with life-threatening injuries.

It turned out that the window washer, whose name was not released, was with another washer and had slipped from the roof of the stately building at 400 Montgomery while they prepared equipment for their cleaning platform, police said. The plunge sent him 130 feet to the street below.

State workplace safety inspectors were assessing the apparent accident, and it may be months before they come to conclusions about whether Century Window Cleaning of Concord, the firm doing the job, is at fault. Company officials did not respond to calls for comment Friday.

"He was one lucky man to survive that fall," said Peter Melton, a spokesman with the California Department of Industrial Relations. "It seems pretty clear the cushioning of the car he fell onto kept him alive."

The terrible fall was the last thing the hurry-up Financial District crowd could have expected on a typical Friday morning.

"At first all I saw was, out of the corner of my eye, a blue streak falling," said Hartwell, a banker. "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, 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 said. "He was doing his best to control his breathing, but he couldn't speak. I got close and told him, 'Breathe, just breathe.'"

The driver of the car, Mohammad Alcozai of Dublin, got out almost immediately after the impact. The victim hit the roof and back window of the 2002 four-door Camry, totaling the car. A split-second difference in timing and the worker might have landed on the windshield, with potentially terrible consequences for Alcozai.

"It was a miracle," Alcozai told The Chronicle.

A traveling tech specialist, Alcozai said he was supposed to go on a call to Walnut Creek on Friday morning, but after it was canceled he wound up in San Francisco. As he was about to turn onto California Street from Montgomery, 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 said.

"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.

"I just hope he comes through all right."

Alcozai's wife, Wahida Noorzad, said she was in disbelief when she saw what was left of their 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 couple said they would like to visit the victim's family at the hospital over the weekend.

Hartwell said one of the first things he did when he got alongside the car was assess the situation for additional injuries, as one would in a battlefield scene.

"I said, 'Where's the driver?' And he held up his hand and said, 'I'm OK,'" Hartwell said. "He was more concerned about the victim than anything else, like the rest of us."

Dan Dunnigan, a San Francisco fire spokesman, said firefighters were dispatched at 10:03 a.m. and arrived two minutes later.

Melton, the state spokesman, said Century Window Cleaning was issued a citation in 2008 for four regulatory violations in Redwood City. Two involved work procedures, and two involved use of equipment, he said. No accidents or injuries were involved. The company was fined $2,720.

Despite Friday's fall and other recent window-washing incidents that drew wide notice, industry representatives say the job is not that dangerous.

Last week, two washers at the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center were stranded for nearly two hours when their scaffolding malfunctioned on the nation's tallest skyscraper. Last month, another pair of washers was left dangling for nearly two hours on a high-rise in Oakland. None of the teams was injured.

Stefan Bright, safety director for the International Window Cleaners Association, said 14 incidents have been reported this year involving window washing that required rescue, and three of those involved injuries. One was fatal. In 2013, there were 11 rescue situations, two of which involved fatalities.

"Relatively speaking, washing windows isn't even in the top 100 most dangerous professions," Bright said. "What happened in San Francisco today is extremely rare."

Chronicle staff writer Kale Williams contributed to this report.

Hamed Aleaziz and Kevin Fagan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz, @KevinChron

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