FDNY and NYPD rescues two window washers stuck outside the 44th floor of Hearst Tower

Midtown Manhattan was the scene of some serious drama and a rescue mission this Wednesday afternoon.

The FDNY and NYPD rescued two maintenance workers stranded outside 44th floor of the Hearst Tower after the scaffold they were using malfunctioned and left them dangling, according to Newsday

When a motor on the apparatus stopped around 2:30 p.m., the men were left hanging, literally, outside the building they were servicing at 300 West 57th Street and Eighth Ave. In order to help the men, police closed off traffic on Eighth Avenue as about 12 FDNY units responded to the call and the firefighters assessed the situation from the roof, two stories above the stuck scaffolding.

After exhausting a few ideas of rescue including lowering ropes to the men from the roof firefighters, around 4:15 pm firefighters cut a hole in adjacent double pane windows, so that Firefighter Tom Gayron could get onto the structure and bring the men back inside the building, according to DNA info New York.

Photo Courtesy of Twitpic.com.

Upon rescue the men kept repeating," Thank you, thank you," to the firefighters and paramedics. No serious injuries were sustained by either of the men, only shortness of breath from the anxiety of the predicament in one of the workers.

According to DNA info New York, an FDNY source said, "They're both sound. They're both safe."

Ted Lotti, deputy director of security for the Hearst Corporation said that the identities of the men rescued have not been released, though it is confirmed that they worked Tractel Inc., a company that specializes in mechanical hoist systems with Long Island City offices.

The scaffold they were in was a washing system made of a, rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car, supporting a forty-foot mast and a hydraulic boom arm attached by six strands of wire rope to a telescopic cleaning basket, houses a computer that monitors sixty-seven electromechanical safety sensors and switches, and runs around the roof of the Tower on four hundred and twenty feet of elevated steel track, " according to local correspondents at the The New Yorker.

A large group of New Yorkers gathered below to watch the rescue and was very confused about what was going on. What they did know was how unbelievably high the men were and that they were apparently stuck.

"I've never seen anything like this, it's a very scary thing to happen to someone," said a passerby Manhattan resident Luis Santamaria. "It's so crowded here it could have ended very tragically, but I'm thankful it didn't.