A couple of brave window washers spent about an hour and a half stuck at the side of United Nations Headquarters in New York City on Saturday evening.
The window washers were helping to prepare the iconic UN building for the UN General Assembly, which later this month and will see heads of state from all around the world arriving in New York for a series of high-level meetings and speeches.
The two window washers were first reported to be stuck at about 7PM. They were reportedly trapped on the outside of the building’s 12th floor. Passersby stopped to gawk and to tweet about their concern.
At 8:30, a joint effort carried out by the New York Fire Department and the NYPD’s Special Operations squad finally rescued the window washers. Nobody was harmed. The rescue was announced by J. Peter Donald, the NYPD’s assistant commissioner for communication and public information.
The window washers at the United Nations were just rescued by @NYPDSpecialops & @FDNY
— J. Peter Donald (@JPeterDonald) September 16, 2018
Two Other Window Washers Were Trapped Last Month Near the Top of UN Headquarters
UN headquarters in New York preparing for #UNGA73 in ten days.
Via @isardasorensen
The United Nations is 39 stories high (although John Bolton, the National Security Adviser who once served as the US ambassador to the UN, once famously said that “If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”)
UN Headquarters in New York was completed in 1952 and sits on nearly 18 acres of land overlooking the East River, in a neighborhood of midtown Manhattan sometimes known as Turtle Bay.
Last month, on August 16, window washers were trapped on the 39th floor of Headquarters after their harness got stuck near the top floor. In that case, officials inside the building smashed a window so that the window washers could get back inside. The window washers reportedly waited nearly an hour before they were freed and could get into the building. They were reportedly unharmed.