Bystanders used everything they could as they rushed to help two window cleaners who plunged about 12 storeys from a highrise onto an awning in Sydney's CBD.
The two men were working in a metal window-cleaning cage about 11am on Tuesday outside the top of a building on the intersection of Pitt and Bridge St when a cable snapped and sent them plummeting to the ground.
"We all looked out the window, the cable had snapped and we saw the whole scaffold with two guys plunge straight down ... we heard the thump," Con Triantafillou, who works in a building across the road, told AAP.
It is believed one man, aged in his mid-20s, is in a stable condition with back and internal injuries after he was thrown from the cage and bounced off the awning before being left dangling above the ground by his harness.
"He ended up being about three metres off the floor. If the harness wasn't there, he probably would have died," Paul Sleiman, who was on the street when the men fell, told AAP.
A passing motorist pulled his ute onto the kerb and under the dangling man so he could be stabilised on the vehicle's roof before emergency crews arrived.
The other man, aged in his 50s, was treated for lower leg injuries and is in a serious but stable condition after he crashed onto the awning with the cage.
Passers-by used a ladder to reach him before he was treated by paramedics and stretchered away by a Fire & Rescue NSW cherry picker.
NSW Ambulance Acting Superintendent Brad Goodwin said both men, who remain in St Vincent's Hospital, were conscious and responsive when emergency services arrived.
"It was on top of an awning of a building so that creates its own challenges," he said.
"We're always grateful for the support of the community and bystanders, and it was also nice when the professionals got on scene that they made room for us to do our thing."
Worksafe NSW has been notified and the cleaning company is yet to comment.
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