raw video no audio SEATTLE - A window washer plunged eight stories down the side of a building Thursday in downtown Seattle, but was stopped by a safety rope just inches before hitting the ground, officials and witnesses said.
Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Dana Vander Houwen said the rope saved the man's life by catching at the second story and softening the impact when the man reached the pavement below. His only injury was a broken little finger.
Eyewitnesses said they heard screams and looked up to see the man plunging down the exterior of the Broadacres building in an alleyway near Second Avenue and Pine Street.
Others saw the man fall as they looked out of their windows from offices inside the building.
"He was going fast as he flew by when I saw him. And screaming. It was horrifying," said Tiffany Young, executive creative director of Smashing Ideas Inc., who works in an office inside the building.
Robert Kleppen, who works in an office on the building's seventh floor, said he heard the man yelling and then he saw him falling.
Kleppen said a portion of the man's body smashed through a seventh-floor window and then he bounced back outside the building as he continued his free-fall.
"We saw a body come through the seventh-floor window, and then he continued to fall, and then we heard his stuff hit the ground," Kleppen said. "We thought he was dead."
Kleppen said he and some co-workers ran outside to see if anyone else was in trouble. That's when they saw the window washer suspended about a foot above the brick pavement of the alleyway after his terrifying fall.
"His hands and his legs actually hit the ground," Kleppen said, but the man's torso did not impact the pavement at full velocity, saving his life.
Young said it was a horrifying experience - not just for the window washer who fell but for the people who saw it happen.
"Completely traumatized several of our employees," she said.
Vander Houwen says the 34-year-old man was conscious and talking to paramedics who took him to the hospital Thursday with non-life threatening injuries.
