By RIA Novosti
New York : Alcides Moreno, a window cleaner who survived after falling 47 floors from an Upper East Side building last month, has been moved from hospital to a rehabilitation center, local media said on Monday.
The 37 year-old employee at the City Wide Window Cleaning company, suffered multiple fractures to his spinal column, ribs, legs and right arm, as well as serious head, abdominal and chest injuries, after the scaffolding he was working on gave way and crashed 150 meters (492 feet) to the ground on December 7. His 30 year-old brother Edgar, who was working with him, died instantly.
Moreno, an Ecuadorian immigrant and a married father of three, was conscious when the ambulance arrived, but later fell into a coma. He underwent a total of 16 operations, nine of which were to fix his multiple fractures, as well as emergency surgery to stem the internal bleeding and trauma. He also received 24 units of blood and 19 units of plasma.
The New York Times quoted a doctor as saying that the reason why Moreno was discharged from hospital so early was due to an absence of medical complications.
Doctors are puzzled about Moreno’s survival, as according to medical statistics, falls from 10-11 floors are always fatal. Many physicians have speculated that his miraculous survival was the result of a fortunate chain of events.
Brian Schwartz, professor of physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was quoted as saying by the New York Post that the scaffolding beneath Moreno created enough resistance to slow down his free fall from 100 mph to 50 mph, a speed common for falls from eight floors.
In addition, he was holding onto the scaffold, which could have reduced the impact further.