UK NEWS

MIRACLE MAN FALLS 47 FLOORS AND LIVES

Alcides Moreno

Saturday January 5,2008

By Polly Buchanan

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A WINDOW cleaner survived a 500ft plunge from the top of a New York skyscraper.

Alcides Moreno fell 47 storeys, hitting the pavement at the equivalent of around 120mph.

But despite horrendous injuries, the immigrant worker from Ecuador has defied science by waking from a month-long coma.

Moreno, 37, fell from the top floor of the office building in Manhattan when cables holding his cradle snapped.

His brother Edgar, 30, who was working with him, smashed into a fence and was killed instantly. Neither man was wearing a harness.

Father-of-three Moreno is now able to breathe without assistance and has movement in all his limbs. On Christmas Day he spoke to his family for the first time since the fall.

Dr Philip Barie, head of surgery at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, said: “If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one.”

He said people who fall more than 10 storeys almost never survive. “Forty-seven floors is virtually beyond belief.”

Moreno’s wife Rosario said: “He keeps telling me that it just wasn’t his time.”

He still faces more spinal surgery and an operation to reconstruct his abdominal wall. It will be at least a year before doctors know whether he will make a full recovery.