Employer Faces Citations : Window Washer Falls Four Stories, Survives

A window washer who reportedly failed to properly secure his hanging chair fell Tuesday from the 10th floor of the Hotel Meridien in Newport Beach but survived by hanging on to a rope and landing on a sixth-floor roof.

Investigators for the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration said that the conditions under which Russell James Blake was using the boatswain’s chair violated state occupational safety codes and that Blake was working Tuesday for a man whose Brea company has been cited at least five times since 1982 for safety violations.

State OSHA Investigator Ray Rooth said citations may be issued in the Tuesday accident, the second fall involving a boatswain’s chair in six months. A window cleaner fell from the Anaheim Civic Center last November, and later died, when the rope holding his chairlike window cleaning apparatus snapped.

Tim Bielski, owner of Bielski Window Cleaners, said Tuesday that his past citations were unmerited and that he has refused to pay the fines or stop using the boatswain’s chair because the state agency has failed to explain why the chair and an accompanying lowering device called a Sky Genie are unsafe.

Blake, 35, of Orange, suffered a broken leg and lumbar vertebrae, internal injuries and severe rope burns to his left hand in his fall. He was in fair condition Tuesday at Fountain Valley Community Hospital, where he was taken after the 7:15 a.m. accident, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Bielski and investigators said Blake was preparing to lower himself from the 10th floor but, after climbing over the side of the roof, discovered he had not hooked his belt to the lowering device that controls the speed of descent.

OSHA investigator Rooth said Blake called down to two other washers working on the fifth floor as he dangled from the 10th-floor ledge, clutching only the rope in one hand and a ledge with the other.

By the time the other washers rode the elevator up to rescue him, he said, Blake had already slipped, apparently breaking his fall by sliding down the nylon rope, Rooth said.

Rules Outlined

He said Blake fell about 40 feet and landed face up on an area of the 10-story hotel where the roof is six floors high. He said Blake was unconscious when his co-workers reached him.

Newport Beach police spokesman Tom Little said officers called state OSHA personnel to investigate the fall, a routine procedure in industrial accidents.

Rooth, reading from a state administrative code, said that “boatswain’s chairs should be used for window washing only where the windows cannot be cleaned safely and practicably by other means --which means a last resort, like when the area you are cleaning is an alcove too small for a scaffold.”

Scaffolds or stages are far more expensive and cumbersome than a boatswain’s chair, and window washers who use them generally place higher bids for window cleaning services as a result, Rooth said. The Meridien hotel has invested “a lot of money” to equip the building for the use of scaffolds but apparently did not know state codes prohibit the use of boatswain’s chairs when they accepted Bielski’s contract bid, Rooth said. Hotel administrators did not return phone calls Tuesday afternoon.

A boatswain’s chair--named because it was initially used to clean the sides of large ships--is attached to the window washer by a belt that also hooks up to two safety ropes and the lowering device.

Bielski said Blake fell “by his own negligence--he just didn’t hook himself up” to the lowering mechanism.

“They’ve given no reason for why they’re unsafe,” Bielski said. “They give citations to everybody using them. I’m just telling you that we’ve been using the things for quite a while, and we find them much safer than stages.

“I’ll fight this one. I’m not going to pay someone a fine if they don’t say why (the chairs) are dangerous. Anything is dangerous if you’re not alert and awake.”

Said Rooth: “In this case, the company involved has been cited before, and we will be issuing them another citation . . . . Their primary equipment is boatswain’s (chairs). It would appear that he (Bielski) doesn’t intend to change unless we do something . . . to let him know we’re serious about this.”