A California family experienced a frightening incident Wednesday night as one of the glass enclosures on the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago appeared to crack, Fox News reported.
Visiting Chicago's Willis Tower Skydeck on their vacation, the family said that they were reassured by staffers that the window floor was unbreakable before walking onto the glass enclosures known as The Ledge, according to a report from WMAQ, Chicago's NBC affiliate.
While at the 103rd floor tourist attraction atop the city's tallest building, the family noticed that one of the four glass enclosures jutting out from the side of the building appeared to show cracks, WRDB reported.
"Crazy feeling and experience," Alejandro Garibay, a tourist, told NBC Chicago. A picture posted on its website shows shattered glass that was the floor of the Skydeck.
"I walked them [staff] over so they could see and they were totally shocked and asked us to step away," Garibay said.
A building spokesman, however, claimed it was merely a protective coating doing what it was supposed to do.
The cracking was in a scratch-resistant coating on the glass structure and did not affect the structural integrity of the box, said the spokesman, who declined to be named, Lake Zurich Courier reported.
"Occasionally this happens, but that's because we designed it this way," he said. "Whatever happened last night is a result of the protective coating doing what it's designed to."
Launched in 2009, there are four glass enclosures that provide tourists the feeling of standing suspended in air.
"The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet above the ground and jut out 4 feet from the building," Fox News reported. "They're actually more like boxes than balconies, with transparent walls, floor and ceiling. Visitors are treated to unobstructed views of Chicago from the building's west side and a heart-stopping vista of the street and Chicago River below -- for those brave enough to look straight down."
Officials from the Willis Tower did not respond to the station for comment.
