SpiderDan Goodwin

Spider-Dan Goodwin's irrepressible ascent: As a boy growing up on Fishers Lane in Cape Porpoise, Goodwin writes in his recently published memoir, "SKYSCRAPERMAN," he loved to climb trees. "So much so the police tried to arrest me for climbing one of the tallest in Portland, Maine. But despite their use of a cherry picker, they weren't able to catch me."

Goodwin was 25 years old and about 20 floors up when a Sears security guard angrily held a note up to the window demanding he descend. Spider-Dan, who was climbing up the window washer track, stuck a suction cup over the note and proceeded up the side of the building. Ambulances, hook and ladder trucks and helicopters were dispatched to the scene. At the 35th floor, Dan became aware that a window washing machine was descending the track in his path and that the window next to him had been removed from inside the building. Using suction cups equipped with stirrups, he scooted horizontally away from his would-be captors. Some six and a half hours and 1,450 feet into the climb, Dan duct-taped an American flag near the top of the Sears Tower. "It was my way of thanking my father for fighting in the Korean War," he writes.

Meanwhile, his father, Dale Goodwin, was back in Cape Porpoise, completely unaware of Danny's plans until he was contacted by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Though proud of his son's courage, Dale was grateful he hadn't known about the stunt ahead of time. "If I'd known he was going to do this I would have been a nervous wreck," Dale Goodwin told a reporter for the Biddeford Journal Tribune. Brenda Buchanan, a correspondent for the York County Coast Star, talked to local folks about the feat. "That's Danny for you," they told her in unison, "always looking for another adventure. Danny Goodwin — daredevil, track star, mountain climber, skier, gymnast and stuntman. Danny Goodwin — bohemian, dancer, dreamer, wanderer, always looking for something to be afraid of, climbing the cliffs over the ocean because there was nothing higher to climb."

Well, Danny had found something higher. As soon as he reached the top of Sears Tower he was taken to jail overnight on charges of disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and criminal damage to property. After celebrity appearances on Johnny Carson and the Today Show, Dan pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. His fine was only $35, but Fire Commissioner William Blair threatened dire consequences should Goodwin ever attempt to climb another building in his jurisdiction. That was a challenge Danny couldn't resist. On Veteran's Day he scaled Chicago's John Hancock Center while the gathering crowd below chanted, "Let him climb. Let him climb."

Enraged, Commissioner Blair ordered his firemen to wash "Spider Dan" Goodwin off the side of the building with a fire hose. The defiant climber clung to the building 300 feet off the ground. Unwilling to be responsible for the death of a beloved comic book hero, the Mayor of Chicago ordered Blair to shut the water off and Spider-Dan finished his ascent. Damages to the building and other expenses reportedly totaled $16,000. This time, the sentence was a year's probation.
When asked what possessed him to take such risks, Spider-Dan replied, "I have a new idea, a new concept for fire rescue. I needed a forum to present these ideas to the public."

In his memoir, Goodwin writes that he was motivated to climb buildings by two life-altering experiences. After witnessing the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, he was haunted by the reality that firefighters had no way to rescue victims trapped on the middle floors of a skyscraper fire. And then, a few months after the fire, Dan sustained serious injuries in a car crash. During his recovery from the accident he vowed never again to be dissuaded from his dreams.



Spider-Dan climbed the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York on Memorial Day, 1983, nearly falling to his death when the window washer track pulled away from the building. Mayor Edward Koch was not impressed. "These stunts endanger participants, police officers and onlookers," he said to the press. "And it cost taxpayers $4,235 just in police department man-hours and equipment." Somehow, Dan Goodwin always evaded authorities long enough to finish his intended climbs. Until July 1983, that is. Dan was escorted away from the Bald Head Cliff by officers of the York (Maine) Police Department.

"But three days later, he returned, after notifying local newspapers," Brenda Buchanan wrote in the Boston Globe. "He told the officers who met him at the bottom of the cliff that he was determined to make another ascent." Unlike police forces in Chicago and New York City, York's finest were able to take Spider-Dan into custody when he was just a couple feet up the cliff.

Goodwin’s act calls for a “Skyscraper Defense Department” within Homeland Security and introduces technological solutions for saving people in towering structures. One idea is having trucks with mounted hydraulic platforms capable of reaching two hundred and thirty feet into the air. Another is to have evacuation modules similar to express elevators that would be deployed from the ground, helicopters, and roofs. Lieutenant Edward Ghilardi of the San Francisco Fire Department likes the ideas but isn’t sure if they will all be realistic. “The gondola thing, it sounds good, but the bad thing is how do you fly helicopters in the city in such a tight area?” he asks. He thinks trucks with mounted platforms could help his department greatly as long as the vehicles are able to maneuver quickly through the city.

The platforms would be capable of reaching nearly eighteen stories high, improving the seven stories that ladders on San Francisco fire trucks reach. Goodwin wants buildings vulnerable to terrorist attacks to add “refuge areas” and “egress stations” that would allow easy evacuations for teams rescuing people. He won’t reveal which buildings are in terrorist’s crosshairs but promises to do so in his book. He implies the next attack could be in San Francisco and says bridges could be destroyed as well. “The Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge are prime targets,” he says. “Most likely they will be taken out when the next attack occurs because, as everyone knows, you take out the bridges along with a few of the tallest skyscrapers and the Pacific Stock Exchange, and you’ve shut down the West Coast.”

Goodwin envisions future skyscrapers built with a host of other structural changes, including wider staircases, hardened elevator shafts, evacuation modules, roof helicopter pads, and anti-aircraft/missile systems. He believes the September 11 attacks proved that in-building defense systems are necessary and fears as the country falls deeper into inflation and transitions into new leadership, a similar attack is imminent. “This country is becoming extremely vulnerable,” he says. “You look at history and see how most of the greatest attacks occurred when the economy was faltering.” Goodwin says that if the Skyscraper Act was in effect prior to the World Trade Center attack, the outcome could have been very different. “I will prove in the book that we could have rescued all of the people, we could have put out the fire, and if we had done that, the World Trade Centers would still be standing.”