![]() Brooding towers of steel, glass Skyscrapers seem solid, immutable, as blank and indestructible as mountains. It slices down, a scythe hurtling through the sky. But, for now, the glass is still a shadow. ![]() The crash of a thousand cymbals is how one person will describe it. It will shatter into thousands of pieces, some so small they will look like rock salt. But in a matter of seconds, the glass, moving so fast that it is a flash, a fleck in the corner of someone's eye, will smash into the sidewalk. They see it, if they see it at all, as nothing more than a backdrop. On this Friday in October 1999, like every other day, hundreds of people walk by the skyscraper. The City of Chicago knew about that first accident, too, but did not thoroughly investigate it. The company knew why the windows kept cracking and failed to do all it could to make them safer, even though someone was hurt by falling glass at the building in 1994. Windows have been cracking there for 27 years, ever since the red tower began to stand, like an exclamation point, on the southeastern edge of the city's skyline. But the problems with the glass at the CNA building are much older than that. This window should have been replaced four months ago, when it cracked, and it wasn't. ![]() Just about two hours ago, a woman called for someone to fix it. All morning, workers could hear it howling. Some do suspect there is something wrong with the window. On the other side of the cracked pane, employees who work on the 29th floor of the CNA building don't know what has happened, not yet. But what sends the piece of glass on its brutal path is not so much chance as carelessness. What if the two construction workers had not waited for the third to catch up? What if the student crossed the street at another corner? What if the mother had gotten a ride downtown with her best friend instead of taking the "L"? What if she stopped-right now-to tie her shoe or button her coat? Perhaps it is fate that brings them all here. Think, for a moment, about how all these people happened to arrive at this particular spot at this particular time on this particular day. The mother is on her way to a job interview. A 3-year-old girl walks a step or two ahead of her mother. A parking lot attendant stands in the booth and wonders if he should run next door to pick up some food. Three construction workers decide to make the best of a workday cut short by rain and go out for lunch. A college student is headed to the camera supply store. People walk quickly, heads ducked against the drizzle. Below, the west side of South Wabash Avenue bustles with Friday lunchtime traffic. It is a jagged triangle, no larger than a cafeteria tray, dark with dirt on one side, covered with white film on the other. Cracks slowly crept across its surface, pieces pushing and pulling with each gust of wind. For weeks, the cracked window on the 29th floor of the CNA building strained against the adhesive film that held it in place 340 feet above the ground, expanding almost imperceptibly in the heat of the afternoon sun, contracting with the nighttime chill. The glass falls like a shadow, swift and silent, a dark blur swooping through the wet sky.
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