June 11, 200818 yr Back on his feet: The walking miracle window cleaner who fell 47 storeys from New York skyscraper By Mail Foreign Service Last updated at 11:47 AM on 10th June 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories A window cleaner who survived plummeting 47 storeys is back on his feet only six months later. Alcides Moreno has astounded family, friends and doctors with his extraordinary recovery from the horror fall that killed his brother. Doctors described his survival as miraculous. Now the only signs of his terrible ordeal are a limp and a long scar on his left leg. Recovering: Alcides Moreno plummeted 47 storeys Moreno, 37, and brother Edgar, 30, were cleaning windows at the top of a New York apartment building when cables connecting their cleaning platform to the roof failed. High point: The New York skyscraper Mr Moreno fell from The brothers fell 500ft inside their cleaning scaffold with Alcides suffering injuries to his brain, chest and abdomen, as well as fractured ribs, a broken arm and broken legs. Doctors managed to save his life but he underwent 16 operations during six-weeks in hospital, and received 24 pints of blood. Mr Moreno, of Linden, New Jersey, stunned doctors when he spoke his first words on Christmas Day, after coming out of a medically induced coma. 'I did what?' the dad-of-three asked nurses as he regained consciousness for the first time. Now the Ecuadorian-born worker has returned to his home after months of physiotherapy, which he must undergo three times a week. Dr Philip S Barie, chief of critical care at the New York hospital that treated Mr Moreno, said: 'Above ten storeys, most of the time we never see the patients because they usually go to the morgue. 'This is right up there with those anecdotes of people falling out of airplanes and surviving.'
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