Llama and Lamb

My supervisor, Jeff Brown called me to tell me that people were hanging from my building at two o’clock. My co-worker Joe Black and I went outside to meet up with the rest of the office who were out on the sidewalk looking up at the three men dangling about 15 stories in the air.

I originally thought the men were window washers, but I later found out from building management that the men were hanging signage. The First Indiana Bank has recently been bought by M/I Bank, thus First Indiana Plaza has changed to M/I Plaza. These three men were about to haul up letters for the sign when the metal wires holding the scaffolding broke.

I appeared that one man’s safety rope was caught in the scaffolding, so the fire department rescue squad belayed down to untangle the rope and bring one man back up to the top of the M/I Building. The two other men waited at the end of their safety ropes suspended 15 floors above the ground. After about 45 minutes, these two men were brought down to the parking garage of the M/I Building. The first was able to walk away while the other appeared to have at least a broken ankle. They fastened him to a stretcher and carried him away.

Shards of glass from the Bose McKinney and Evan’s floor window littered the top floor of the parking garage and the alley on the southern side of the building. At this time, i do not know what caused the windows to shatter, but as the men were being rescued police asked bystanders to moved away from the building because falling glass could get caught in the wind.

I went back to my office floor which is just above the parking garage and surveyed the fallen debris. One of the skyscrapers signage workers’ hats lay on the ground–lost from the fall. Glass was still falling to the ground and I heard that some cars were damaged in the alley. All photography by Joe Black

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