Willis Tower platform crack puts visitors on edge

As if stepping on a glass floor protruding off the side of one of Chicago’s famous skyscrapers isn’t scary enough, how about when one sheer, thin layer of said 103rd-floor platform cracks?

Such was the case Monday when visitors of the Willis Tower, owned by insurance broker Willis Towers Watson PLC, once famously called the Sears Tower, watched in horror as the protective layer over the glass shattered under the feet of a woman and her children, according to media reports.

The protective layer “did what it was supposed to do,” CNN reported, airing the harrowing moment caught on video by a Chicago resident.

"There was a woman with two kids and they looked really pale and scared because the floor just cracked," the man who filmed the ordeal told CNN.

The glass ledge, meanwhile, was made to hold up to five tons, with the shattered protective layer intended to shield the glass from scratching under feet of some 1.5 million visitors a year, the network reported.