Window washers rescued from WTC 69th floor

New York: New York City firefighters rescued two window washers on Wednesday who had been trapped for two hours on broken scaffolding dangling outside the 69th floor of New York's tallest skyscraper, local officials said.

Rescuers cut a hole in a window of the newly opened building, One World Trade Centre, and quickly pulled in the two men from the oblong, open-topped platform as it hung almost vertically high above the National September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan.

The 104-floor tower, at the site of the destroyed Twin Towers, is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

The rescued men were identified as Juan Lopez, who has been a window washer for five years, and Juan Lizama, who has been on the job for 14 years, said Gerard McEneaney, a labour union official.

McEneaney told the NY1 news channel that it appeared that a cable had snapped after a mechanical failure.

Gary Hansen, an architect who worked on 1 World Trade Centre for the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, happened to be across the street while the platform was dangling.

He said that the building was designed with three cranes on top. Two of the cranes could be used to suspend platforms to allow workers to wash windows. The third crane was available for emergencies such the one that unfolded on Wednesday.

"These are the kind of emergencies architects plan for," Hansen said.

Workers in nearby offices clustered around their windows to watch the rescue, which was also shown live on television, while police closed off streets around the building in lower Manhattan.

Tenants began moving into the new tower only last week. The tower rises 1,776 feet (541 meters) above the ground and replaces the Twin Towers destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"Things like this happen all the time in the city," Ray Elmadolar, a construction manager who works at a neighbouring office building, said as he watched the unfolding operation, "but you don't want it to happen so high up."