A 45-year-old man who was about to start cleaning the windows of a four-story building in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward died after he fell 15 meters to the ground on Tuesday.
According to police, the incident occurred at around 1:30 p.m., Kyodo News reported. The worker struck the eave of a store on the building’s first floor as he fell, causing fragments of the broken eave to hit a 28-year-old woman pedestrian in the face. She suffered a broken nose.
The man was rushed to the hospital in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest and was pronounced dead about 90 minutes later.
According to police, the man was attempting to lower himself from the building’s rooftop to start cleaning windows when his safety rope somehow came undone.
© Japan Today
12 Comments
Login to comment
spektral
this is so tragic and rare in a country with such high labor safety standards. Working in high places is something I have never ever wanted to do. I feel truly sorry for his family's loss.
602miko
This is very sad and tragic.
Jay
If I had a dollar for every time I saw an arborist balancing precariously from either a flimsy branch or wonky 10-foot ladder, with no harness or any protection other than a white towel wrapped around his head, I'd just about be rich.
WorkSafe or similar OHS scheme is a concept very rarely seen in practice over here.
May the family of the deceased receive a hefty compensation payout.
Lindsay
the man was attempting to lower himself from the building’s rooftop to start cleaning windows when his safety rope somehow came undone.
That’s a mistake he won’t make again. Ropes don’t just come undone or break. His complacency has cost him his life and injured someone else.
wallace
Probably sitting in a seating system rather than a cradle. Tragic for his family. Industrial accident compensation, hopefully.
Garthgoyle
Dang. Apart from the poor guy's tragedy, at least he didn't directly hit her.
Stephen Chin
Horrible death! Ghastly! Why? Why is there not a law requiring owners of buildings with more than one story to install windows that can open from inside for cleaning? And force owners of skyscrapers to change their present system requiring window cleaners suspended outside the building to clean their windows? Will this law not prevent many window-cleaners falling to their painful tragic deaths?
Yubaru
Where in the world did you get this from? While Japan may not be a third world country, that uses bamboo scaffolding to put up it's high rises, dont be fooled.
Back in the day, I got my 20 ton crane license at the prefectural construction association, you would obviously be surprised at the accidents that DO happen here, and quite often.
And by chance, havent you read about the men who are/did cleanup work at Fukushima? That story alone should literally frighten the hell out of you, and make you question your kool-aid induced belief that Japan has "high safety standards" everywhere.
Yeah, it's tragic, as I am sure neither expected what happened, and the poor women never thought that the sky was literally falling on her!
kaimycahl
An accident is an unplanned event as with the lady being in the area at the wrong time suffering a broken nose. In this case, I would want to believe this guy performed his job well, and he performed the same task repetitiously numerous times. Perhaps he became too comfortable with this same routine, and forgot to tie and check his safety rope, as I read the report it stated "somehow the rope came undone".
serendipitous1
'Safety rope' doesn't sound like the right term in this case.
Paul
Something is not right here! Safety rope is a backup, therefore something else happened first!
starpunk
Indeed. Most people who fall from buildings don't survive if it's over three stories high.
If he did, she too would probably be dead.