A man scaled San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower on Tuesday morning, climbing a face of the 1,070-foot-tall skyscraper as if it were a rock-climbing wall.
Many posted images and video on social media. Tom Metcalfe of Oakland was walking down Mission Street at 9:35 a.m. on his way to a conference when he saw the unusual sight.
“I noticed the police sealing off the area around Salesforce Tower,” Metcalfe said. “A couple of people were looking up and so I glanced up and I saw a man climbing up the tower. He was a third of the way up the tower and making quick progress. It looked like he knew what he was doing. He was clambering up the outside.”
The San Francisco Police Department said it received a report of a male climbing the building at 9:21 a.m.
“Officers observed a male on the side of the building several floors up from the street ascending on his own power,” police said.
The San Francisco Fire Department shared an image of a man climbing up the Salesforce Tower on May 3, 2022.
San Francisco Fire DepartmentPolice spokesperson Robert Rueca said at 10 a.m. that police blocked off streets in the area and were trying to make contact with the climber. Medics are on the scene.
The San Francisco Fire Department said on Twitter that the climber is placing firefighters’ lives and the public’s safety at risk.
“AVOID THE AREA and join us in condemning this action,” the fire department wrote on Twitter.
Opened in 2018, the Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco. The top of the building features a permanent multi-million-dollar art installation by San Francisco artist Jim Campbell. The installation consists of 11,000 LED lights that can display low-resolution moving color imagery.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more details become available.