Overview
- On Thursday the gondola used for façade cleaning became immobile at about 200–240 meters on the Commerzbank Tower after a technical malfunction left two workers trapped.
- Frankfurt’s Berufsfeuerwehr dispatched 24 crew members, including five specially trained heights rescuers, who chose to pull the workers up about eleven floors rather than lower them down.
- Rescuers used rope-and-winch techniques and for the first time in an operational rescue deployed a newly acquired battery (akku) winch to speed the extraction.
- Strong gusts blew the gondola as much as eight meters away from the façade and caused it to strike the building, creating a brief high-risk situation for rescuers before they were secured.
- Both workers were brought to safety uninjured, the defective gondola was recovered to the roof by a company technician, the façade was inspected with a drone and no damage was found after a roughly 90-minute operation.