Heart-stopping moment child clings for life onto clothesline

A little girl from China who fell out of a fourth-storey window has miraculously survived after clinging to a clothes airer at 60 feet high in freezing weather.

The five-year-old child had been left at home with her three-year-old brother to play by themselves before the accident happened, according to Chinese media.

A firefighter lowered himself down from the sixth floor to save the frightened girl, who couldn't stop crying.

The incident occurred recently in the Huangdao District of Qingdao city, Shandong Province, according to a news clip from Shandong Life Channel on Kan Kan News.

The girl's mother, surnamed Zhang, told a reporter from the channel that she had left her two children at home unattended because she had errands to run.

Ms Zhang said when she returned home, she found that the door had been locked from inside.
The worried mother shouted from outside her home, asking her three-year-old son to find his five-year-old sister, so that she could help open the door from inside.

She told the reporter: '[My son] kept saying that sister couldn't get down, then he said sister had fallen.'

A terrified Ms Zhang rushed out of the building and looked up her window.
She saw that her daughter was stuck outside of the third-storey window, her feet standing on the narrow window ledge while her hands holding to the clothes airer.

The clothes airer were dented by the momentum of the girl's fall.

According to Ms Zhang, the temperature was around zero degrees celsius at the time.
The mother immediately called the police.

Several of her neighbours held a duvet below the girl, so that they could catch her in case she fell.

Firefighters from the Qingdao Fire Brigade arrive at the scene. However, they did not bring a ladder long enough to reach the third storey.

Wang Yanjun, one of the firefighters, said that Ms Zhang's home was locked and the family living on the fifth floor were not home, so he decided to low himself down from the sixth floor by a rope to save the girl.

The child was successfully rescued.

Ms Zhang said the girl suffered scratches on her hands.

Unlike many Western countries, China does not have laws to prevent parents from leaving young children alone at home.

This has caused similar accidents to happen regularly in China, especially in cities where tall residential buildings are common.