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Dec
13
Surviving a 47 Story Fall
Filed Under urban peril
The story of a New York City window washer’s survival after falling 47 stories raises questions of how do people fall long distances and live?
James Barron and Al Baker examine how some survive falls after their parachutes fail or their window washing scaffolding collapses.
The question of why was echoed when a window-washing platform gave way on Friday and two brothers preparing to clean the black-glass skin of an apartment building on the Upper East Side fell 47 floors. Why did one die and the other survive, though he is grievously injured?
Five days later, the answer can still be only guessed at. Officials and window-washing colleagues of the two brothers speculated that they tried to ride their platform to the ground, as one window washer said he had been trained to do in such an accident.
If so, they were relying on basic physics — the platform would have generated some small amount of wind resistance, slowing the fall — and luck.
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4 Responses to “Surviving a 47 Story Fall”
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Wow! I quess no one considered that God can still perform miracles.
Hi Karen,
It’s an amazing story of survival! I’m sure God was looking out for the window washer who made it through that ordeal.
Which leads to the question: Why did god chose to miraculously save one brother and allow the other to die? Perhaps one was faithful and deserved to live, and the other a sinner who should be punished with a terrifying death?
It hardly seems prudent to rely on god when we don’t understand how or why something is possible.
Thanks for stopping by O’Farrell.
That’s always a mystery.
Why do good people suffer, while sometimes it seems like the bad get rewarded?
I was thinking the same thing as I was writing my response, but didn’t dwell too much on the issue. If we’re going on faith, we can say that God works in mysterious ways and that it was God’s will that things worked out the way that they did.
But, it’s a tough question that has challenged people throughout the ages.