Michael Fox, chief of Special Operations for the Chicago Fire Department, said more than 50 firefighters worked to save the two men, one of whom was pinned against the building, and a second who managed to climb on top of the building.
"We just don't know how he did it," Fox said of the worker who climbed on top of the building, where the men had been doing masonry work.
Fox said at about 11 a.m., the department received a call that scaffolding had collapsed, and a man was trapped. Rescue workers found one of the men hanging on the side of the roof of the building, 320 W. Ohio St. The man's arm appeared to be trapped underneath a piece of scaffolding and his feet were resting on a piece of the building under renovation.
Fox said workers at a neighboring building under construction allowed firefighters to use their crane to help rescue the men. It took firefighters more than an hour to free the pinned man, and the men were given intravenous fluids and oxygen while rescue personnel worked.
The man who had been trapped was bloodied and his head bandaged, but the worker appeared to give a thumbs up sign to media members who gathered next to the building.
Both workers suffered significant blood loss and major head trauma, Fox said. Both were taken to Northwestern Memorial, he said. He said he did not know the men's ages or names. Fox said the cause of the collapse is under investigation.
"We do this quite often," Fox said of scaffolding rescues. "There's a lot of scaffolding in this city."
A large crowd gathered to watch the rescue, as the incident caused major traffic backups along the Ohio feeder ramp to the Kennedy Expressway. All traffic coming in on the feeder ramp was being sent on to Orleans Street.
Parts of the collapsed scaffolding remained hanging from the side of the office building, identified as The Adlake Building.
Emily S. Achenbaum, Dan Blake and Azam Ahmed, Chicago Tribune
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