1 World Trade Centre Opens For Business 13 Years After 9/11
1 World Trade Centre Opens For Business 13 Years After 9/11 (NEW YORK): More than 13 years after the Twin Towers toppled, the central building constructed as their replacement finally opened for business on Monday, with workers moving into 1 World Trade Centre. Publisher Condé Nast, which includes titles such as Vanity Fair and Vogue, has moved 175 employees into the building, with the company occupying floors 20 to 44. Ultimately, Condé Nast will move around 3,400 members of staff to the site in Lower Manhattan, migrating employees from their current Times Square headquarters to 1 World Trade Centre by early next year. Condé Nast spokeswoman Patti Rockenwagner told the New York Post: “Condé Nast is proud to be a part of this important moment of renewal for the city of New York.”
The tower, which is the largest in the western hemisphere, stands 1776-feet tall - the height represents the year of United States independence - and boasts a observation deck on its 102 floor, though this won’t be open to tenants until mid next year. The tower, which costs nearly $4 billion to construct and has 3.5 million square feet of space, was originally scheduled to open in 2006, however the project suffered serious delays over financing and design. Around 60% of the building’s office space has currently been leased, with other tenants including the US Army Corps of Engineers and US Customs and Border Protection.
New York's Number One: At 1,776 feet tall, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Developed by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, this building sets new standards of design, construction, and prestige, and heralds the renaissance of Downtown Manhattan. Managed, operated and leased by The Durst Organization, One World Trade Center is the new icon of New York's skyline and the most recognized and desirable office address in the world.
One World Trade Center (also 1 World Trade Center or 1 WTC; the current building was dubbed the Freedom Tower during initial basework) is the name of two buildings. It most commonly refers to the primary building of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere. The 94-story super tall structure, which shares a name with the northern Twin Tower in the original World Trade Center that was destroyed in the September 11 attacks, stands on the northwest corner of the 16-acre (6.5 ha) World Trade Center site.
The old majestic Twin Towers that became synonymous with the romance, brashness, prosperity, glamour and raw energy of New York City were once the tallest buildings in the world. Designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, they opened standing at 110 stories in 1973 and were both loved and loathed, depending on who you asked. Here are two window washers cleaning in a cradle.
Window washer Jan Demczur used his squeegee to pry open the elevator doors where he and five others were trapped. Taking turns, they used the squeegee and its metal handle to hack through drywall so that they could squeeze through and escape down the stairs. (National Museum of American History)
How a Squeegee Handle Became a Life-Saving Tool on September 11, 2001 - On September 11, 2001, window washer Jan Demczur was ascending One World Trade Center in the elevator with five other men. When the car came to a sudden halt and then started plunging downward, someone in the cab managed to press the emergency stop button. The elevator cab mercifully stopped, but the men smelled smoke and knew they had to find a way out.
The events of what happened next, as told to Smithsonian magazine writer Victoria Dawson for her July 2002 article “Handed Down to History,” include a harrowing escape from the elevator after the men pried open the doors, only to be faced with a wall of Sheetrock. Fortunately, someone had a pocketknife and the men began cutting their way out. But to break through the three-quarter inch thick layers, Demczur recalled, “was going to be hard.” Still, the men persevered.
‘We just started working. Focused on this way to get out. We knew we had only one chance.’
And then, that one chance—that blade—slipped out of Demczur’s hands, falling right down the elevator shaft. “I was very upset with myself. We had a problem and now a bigger problem.” A man standing next to Demczur reached into the window washer’s bucket and seized the Squeegee handle. One more chance.
Squeegee handle underside: A coating of white drywall debris is still visible on the underside of the squeegee handle Jan Demczur used to dig a hole through a wall in his escape from the World Trade Center.
They returned to the wall, systematically cutting furrows, both vertical and horizontal, creating at last a sizable depression in the first two layers of Sheetrock—some 18 by 20 inches in size. ‘We didn’t know what was going on [in the building], but we knew time was running out,” Demczur said. They kicked and kicked again, breaking through the triple layer of Sheetrock only to find. . .still more Sheetrock. Mercifully, it was a single layer, three-quarters of an inch thick. Easily punched through. Finally, they pushed against a tile wall and found themselves underneath a sink in a men’s room.
The six men escaped the building. It took them 90 minutes from the moment the elevator cab had halted in the shaft, but they reached safety only minutes before the tower collapsed—the second tower to do so. The tool that saved their lives, the Squeegee handle, joined the collections of the National Museum of American History in 2002 when Congress designated the museum as the official repository for materials honoring the victims of the September 11 attacks, when 2,996 were killed at the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Virginia and aboard Flight 93 when it crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This week, the museum announced that the Squeegee handle along with 26 other artifacts from the museum’s collections are on view at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Director John Gray noted that the 14 items from the World Trade Center, the eight from the Pentagon and the five from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, "tell the story in ways that words cannot."
My brother was hanging on the outside of Tower One at 4:30 AM the morning of 9/11/01. He was washing the windows outside the building on scaffolding at the 100th floor. He was with a team on 7 in addition to him. At 8:30 AM he went down stairs to get more supplies. By the time he arrived down stairs (it was moments from the time of the planes impact), he felt the impact of the plane. He didn't know what it was, but he knew he felt something enormous, like an earth quake or something. He said he was standing in the lobby, and the plane hit the building. He witnessed the girl who was seen standing under the falling jet fuel who died later at the hospital. At that point nobody was allowed back up stairs, or out of the building. They were forced to stay in the lobby. He was unable to reach his window washing crew. He later learned that the crew was on the floor that was directly hit by the plane, and everyone was vaporized. He was the only one left from his crew. When the building began making noises (prior to collapsing) they were able to exit the lobby to the outside. He made it out just in time before the building collapsed, and ran for his life.
Read Jan Demczur’s World Trade Center escape story here.
Sunlight seeps through the translucent curtains on his living room window, making the lacquered matrioshka dolls on the wall case gleam. Sitting on the sofa, Jan Demczur leafs through a thick binder of news clippings about his heroic Sept. 11 escape, still in a daze at the story they tell. He stays home often now, speaking more Ukrainian than English, a language still difficult for him. When he does venture out, he's sometimes overcome with a sense of fear, his head dizzy and heavy, like a big ball of lead. It's been almost a year, but Mr. Demczur has still not returned to his job as one of the workers who wash the endless sheets of glass stacked to the sky in Manhattan.
Uniform donation:
Jan Demczur poses with his uniform and squeegee handle as he donates them to the National Museum of American History.
It's become a safe new routine, sitting here amid pillows adorned with his wife's cross stitchings, telling how he survived. His ordeal was compelling he was trapped in an elevator with five others after the first plane struck Tower 1, and barely escaped by clawing through the walls with only his squeegee and media from around the world have since flocked to him, reporting his story of survival, and the tiny tool that saved him.
Before, he'd wake up at 4:45 a.m., five days a week, jump on the train to the city, and do his job. Like the thousands of lunch-pail workers who pass each day through the tunnels to the island, Demczur wasn't part of the Manhattan clichés: the vaunting ambition, the ceaseless pace, the glare of art and commerce. Instead, like the steel frames within a skyscraper's facade, he was one of the people behind the city's glamour, those who built, maintained, and ultimately removed piece-by-piece the twisted wreckage of the World Trade Center.
National Museum of American History press conference. Surrounded by news media, Jan Demczur recounts his story as he donates his squeegee handle and uniform to the National Museum of American History.
"Window cleaners have been much like the glass they clean: transparent," says Richard Fabry, publisher of an industry magazine. But Jan Demczur [pronounced John DEMshur] was never a guy to seek attention. Small and demure, he spoke little, and except for occasional mirth in his pale blue eyes, he revealed few emotions.
Content with a predictable routine, he rarely missed a day at work, was honest and industrious,paid his mortgage, and spent time with his wife and kids. His Jersey City house, which had a view of the Twin Towers, was just minutes from the PATH train that took him straight to the sprawling Trade Center, a place he liked to call his second home.
Demczur grew up in Poland and was a plumber by trade. He found himself in the middle of the Solidarity movement in the late 1970s and the turmoil that would begin communism's demise. Even in his 20s, his sense of duty made him keep his distance from the radicals, and he just tried to do his job He came to the US in 1980 to visit his aunt in Queens. He stayed, illegally, and worked as a plumber, making $2.50 an hour. In 1987, he married Nadia, who says she fell in love with his calm, his stability, and the fact that he could do everything around the house. Her father helped Demczur get a union window-cleaning job, with better wages and benefits. In 1991, he started his routine, working at the World Trade Center.
The squeegee handle that saved 6 lives.
"He's not the most vocal person," says Gerard McEneaney, a colleague of Demczur at Union Local 32 BJ. "You wouldn't characterize him as outspoken he's a very soft-spoken, unassuming man." Now, bewildering change. After living through the attacks, his routine shattered, Demczur has been swept into a vortex of publicity, and he finds himself speaking more than he ever has. Suddenly, he's a celebrity. In February, the manufacturer of the squeegee flew him to Reno, Nev., for the annual meeting of the International Window Cleaners Association. There, he spoke in front of hundreds of people.
Those who heard his speech recall a rapt audience. Even though his broken English was difficult to follow, Demczur's presence alone had a powerful effect. "It was just a few months after 9/11," says Mr. Fabry, "and, in some ways, it was an emotional outlet for us to feel connected." To Demczur's astonishment, people came up to shake his hand, take pictures with him, and even get his autograph. Flying to Reno wasn't easy. Planes still make him nervous, but the trip was an accomplishment, he thinks. Although he doesn't say it, all the attention is kind of fun at times. Acquaintances say he's basking in the well-deserved glory, even as he says he'd rather move on.
Squeegee handle underside:
A coating of white drywall debris is still visible on the underside of the squeegee handle Jan Demczur used to dig a hole through a wall in his escape from the World Trade Center.
But the phone keeps ringing three TV requests came during interviews for this story alone and Demczur rarely says no to an interview. "If I answer the phone, I'll say, 'no,' " says his wife Nadia, exasperated. "He can never say no. He wants to please everyone." After enduring their dad's endless interviews, his two children, too, are getting upset, and they ask him why he has to keep talking about the ordeal. When interviewers come now, Nadia is cordial and polite, but has little to say. The children leave the room.
There are other alienating moments. Demczur rarely drives now, because he feels dizzy behind the wheel, afraid to change lanes. On a recent trip to Canada, when he wanted to take a shift driving, his daughter became scared, and refused to sit near him. He gave it a try anyway, but had to stop after five minutes. He says he felt guilty and useless when his wife did all the driving.
Window washer's uniform:
Jan Demczur, a World Trade Center window washer, wore this uniform (shirt, pants, and shoes) on September 11.
The outer rhythms of Demczur's work routines and family life have abruptly changed this past year. And the hero's role others have thrust upon him masks an inner life in turmoil. "For me, when I come home, I'm never thinking about the media or something," Demczur reflects. "I [was] just, whew, whoa I said, I'm lucky. God helped me out. I'm coming home, I'm staying home with my children. I know it's over, it's behind me, but the life's all changed. "I can't sleep. I'm shaking. So many of my friends died, and I think, my God! You don't want to cry, but tears are coming by itself."
After months of psychotherapy and medication, he still wakes in the night, remembering faces: the guard at the Japanese bank on 93; the receptionist at Carr Futures on 92; a new employee who'd asked him where to go that morning. He was working with them the morning of Sept. 11. That Tuesday, he punched in at 6 a.m. and spent most of the morning cleaning glass doors and partitions on floors 90 to 95 in the North Tower, the impact zone. He worked through his 8 a.m. break so he could finish those top floors early otherwise he'd be there until 9. He finished at 8:20 and took the elevator down to the 43rd-floor cafeteria.
Window Cleaner magazine: The November/December 2001 issue of Window Cleaner magazine featured Jan Demczur’s World Trade Center escape story with a cover image of Mr. Demczur as Superman with a squeegee.
At about 8:45, finishing his coffee and danish, he left the cafeteria, and dashed to make an express elevator about to run up to the 77th floor. At 8:48, as he and five others zipped up the shaft, they felt a jolt and then the building sway. The elevator dropped before the emergency brakes ground it to a halt. Later, when smoke started seeping into the car, they knew they had to try to get out. Demczur quietly took charge. After they pried open the elevator doors, he saw the surface was drywall. "Does anyone have a knife?" he asked. No, nothing. So Demczur started chopping at the wall with the 18-inch blade of the squeegee. When the blade broke and fell down the shaft, he used the handle. It took over an hour, but the six men took turns scraping and poking, and finally burst through to a men's bathroom on the 50th floor. Startled firefighters guided them in different directions. Demczur went down the stairs.
The other tower collapsed at 9:59, when he was at the 11th floor. Soon engulfed in darkness, dust, and confusion, he put his hand on the shoulder of the stranger ahead, continuing down. Seeing him in a maintenance uniform, firefighters screamed to him, "How do we get out?" Demczur had them pan the smoke and dust-filled hallways on the third floor with their flashlights, and he spotted an exit to another stairwell. He instinctively held it open as others went through first, until a fireman grabbed him by the arm and led him out.
Window Cleaner magazine: The March/April 2002 issue of Window Cleaner magazine featured Jan Demczur’s donation to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. March-April edition 2002, Issue #90.
Outside, emergency workers gave him oxygen, and water to rinse his eyes. He made his way to the West Side Highway, just a few blocks away, and was finally able to see the sky. "When I look up, and see the tower burning, I turned like ice," Demczur recalls. "Everything was freezing in me." Then, the antennas of Tower 1 start to teeter. "I start to run. I kept looking back, saw the building banging down like a pancake." As he ran, his eyes were burning, his head was pounding, the dust was choking him, and then his body felt numb. A few more blocks away, he noticed how beautiful the day was and, sheepishly admits he began to touch himself to see if he was really alive, like a scene from a silly cartoon.
Demczur couldn't have imagined he'd tell this story to so many, or that his squeegee handle and uniform would become a part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He'll relive a lot of it again this week, when he attends ceremonies in New York and Washington, D.C. But by the end of the year, he hopes to be able to get back to work. "It is a different kind of life. But I prefer the way it was, when people were alive," Demzcur says.
David Shayt (pictured) September 11 Collecting Curator - Museum Specialist, Division of Cultural History. "...asked him the big question: Do you still have that squeegee handle?"
When September 11 happened, I thought of the window cleaners of the World Trade Center. I'd read about them, I knew they were a heroic bunch because of the sheer challenge of the job. So they were on my mind. When I was tasked with the job of building a collection, however, I went to one window cleaner in particular who I had read about: Jan Demczur, of Jersey City, a man who did a really big thing on September 11. He used his window-cleaning squeegee to cut his way out of an elevator on the 50th floor of the World Trade Center after it had jammed and stopped.
He was with five other men. They crawled through the hole he had made with this squeegee handle and escaped from the building just minutes before it came down. I called Jan in December after some difficulties, I found him in Jersey City, met with him and asked him the big question: Did you hang onto the handle, do you still have that squeegee handle? He left the room and came back with something wrapped in a red handkerchief. Turned out to be the handle. He had kept the handle without realizing it. In his blind escape, he had somehow stuffed it in his pocket rather than put it in the bucket that he dropped later. His wife found it, rolled up in his dirty uniform, weeks later. He has donated that squeegee handle to us, that squeegee handle in a supreme act of generosity, together with his dirty uniform and the shoes he was wearing that day.
Each week a floor is added to 1 World Trade Center, the scheduled 1,776-foot-high structure rising on the site of the former Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan. This week, on the eve of the anniversary of the country’s most horrific domestic tragedy, 9/11, dozens of construction workers are welding massive beams of steel to create the 39th floor of what will ultimately be a gleaming glass obelisk, a symbol of a city’s and nation’s resilience and the country’s tallest building.
And watching one of the country’s most significant building projects take shape, beam by beam, bolt by bolt, is Lower Merion native Kenneth A. Lewis. “What we are witnessing is the construction of a new icon, for Lower Manhattan, New York City and for the entire country...” said Lewis. And he should know. The Lower Merion High School graduate is 1 World Trade Center’s project manager, the point person with the design team, construction managers and the myriad of other teams involved in creating the 102 floors that will loom over Lower Manhattan.
The building blocks of becoming an architect
Lewis recalls during a recent interview that during his childhood in Merion one of his joys was creating structures with wood building blocks with his brother, Michael. They once built a tower reaching to the basement ceiling of their home. His first notion of becoming an architect came about at age 12 after watching a neighbor, Norman Paul, an architect, renovating his house. His youth was also influenced by his father, Stanley, “the hardest worker I knew of but always made time for scouts (Liberty Troop 71),” and his mother, Bobbie, who “sent me to art classes at Long Beach Island Art Foundation” and “never doubted and always supported my resolve to be an architect.”
Another personal inspiration, he explains, was his rabbi, Henry Cohen, from Beth David Synagogue in Gladwyne. He “challenged himself, his students and the congregation to dig deeper into the issues of belief, looking at all forms of religion, the issues of the day and to look beyond stereotypes, ‘normal expectations,’ to reach a deeper understanding of the people and world around us.” Lewis, 50, graduated from Lower Merion in 1978. He earned bachelor of architecture and bachelor of fine arts degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983, then earned a master of architecture degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1985.
His influences in architecture include Le Corbusier, Frank Furness and Louis Kahn. He admires the Barnes Foundation building near his home and Philadelphia’s PSFS Tower, which is today the Loews Hotel, a “modern and inspired response” in its time to modest sensibilities without “sacrificing creativity,” he explains. “The PSFS Tower featured prominently in my RISD-degree project and is always a touchpoint when I return to the city,” he relates. “Perhaps it’s because I rode the trolley along 13th Street with my mother once a month to my eye doctor’s office that I was inspired by the city,” he states.
Lewis joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) LLP in 1986, beginning his career at the New York City firm as a designer, and is today a director. The 75-year-old firm is known for designing many of the world’s tallest and most complex structures including the recently completed 160-floor Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Lewis’ projects have included serving as senior designer on the Columbus Center, the USB Warburg Center in Connecticut and the Rio Office Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More recently he served first as senior designer and then as project manager for the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in New York, a double-tower, mixed-use glass-sheathed structure that houses the corporate headquarters of Time Warner, CNN television studios, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
He also served as project manager for the new 7 World Trade Center, a 52-story, 750-foot-tall office tower next to the World Trade Center complex. On 9/11 the original structure collapsed later in the day; the building had been evacuated during the attacks on the Twin Towers.
The rise of 1 World Trade Center
But no project in Lewis’ impressive portfolio can compare to his current task: overseeing the construction of 1 World Trade Center, also colloquially known as “Tower One” and formerly referred to as the “Freedom Tower.” His involvement in the project, which includes contributing to its design, is as deep as the tower’s foundation. His firm, SOM, just blocks away from the World Trade Center, was working with the site’s owners on proposed enhancements to the property’s plaza leading up to 9/11. On that day, a SOM colleague, Arkady Zaltsman, lost his life when the North Tower collapsed. At the time he was meeting with a client on the 105th floor. And after the tragedy members of the firm’s engineering staff worked with rescue teams to evaluate the stability of the surrounding buildings on and off the site.
“SOM’s offices are on Wall Street, just three blocks from the World Trade Center,” said Lewis. “Many of us witnessed the destruction first hand and we lost a friend and co-worker. When we came back to work the next week, we vowed, as a firm, to be a part of the solution, to help heal Lower Manhattan. While each of our projects is special, 1 World Trade Center has layers of emotion and importance — and visibility — that transcend any other building I’ve ever worked on. The memory of Sept. 11 will always be there, but the physical scar that was left on the city is in the process of being mended. I’m very proud to be a part of that effort.”
Tower One, which is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is on schedule for completion in 2013. The construction site is massive in scope, with about 2,000 construction workers on site, according to Lewis, but that number will increase to nearly 3,200 at the peak of construction. The architect speaks about the complexities of the project including working with high-strength concrete and extremely high-wind loads, and building over an active underground-rail system, PATH, which takes commuters to and from New Jersey. An individual steel beam may weigh up to 60,000 to 80,000 pounds. And hoisting these beams are two behemoth Manitowoc crawler cranes, the largest of which is capable of lifting 835 tons. It is the largest crane ever used in Manhattan.
When completed, the 3.5-million-square-foot structure, which will accommodate office and retail use, with a total project cost of more than $3.2 billion will overlook the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which is now under construction and will include two reflection pools on the footprints of the Twin Towers. When combined with its 450-foot telecommunications spire, the 1,776-foot tower (a height evoking the nation’s founding date) will become the tallest building in North America, surpassing the 1,250-foot-tall Empire State Building, 1,450-foot-tall Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) and 1,368-foot-tall former Tower One, the taller of the Twin Towers. (An interesting aside: The new Tower One’s main structure is actually 1,368 feet, equivalent to the former Tower One. The 450-foot spire rests on the roof, which is about 40 feet below the 1,368-foot-high parapet, thus accounting for the 1,776-foot total building height.)
An observation deck will be at the 100th floor and a restaurant with 360-degree views on the 102nd floor. High-speed elevators — the fastest in North America — will take passengers less than a minute to reach the top. Each story will be outfitted with floor-to-ceiling glass, and the base of the building will include prismatic glass, cut to create prisms of dancing sunlight. The top of the telecommunications mast will be a beacon flashing in Morse Code the letter “N,” a symbol standing for New York and used by lightships in the harbor.
Lewis says that Tower One will be a green building as well, featuring rooftop water collection, on-site energy generation and variable-speed fans for the mechanical systems — and SOM will seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification. As a homage to the Twin Towers, moreover, some of the original World Trade Center’s slabs and slurry wall are incorporated into lower levels of the new building. Lewis also talks in length about the building’s “life-safety” elements, some of which have been incorporated into the new 7 World Trade Center and further refined for Tower One. Lewis points out that the design team asked itself after the devastation of 9/11 how it could construct a high-rise office tower to incorporate a broad array of safety enhancements without making it resemble a fortress. The safety features of the “robust” structure include:
The concrete core, where elevator shafts, exit stairways and the utility infrastructure will be installed, is made of 14,000- to 15,000-psi (pounds per square inch) concrete (by comparison, the average psi for concrete cores is 6,000 to 8,000). The stairwells will be pressurized to reduce smoke build-up and wider than in the original Twin Towers — to allow unimpeded movement of office workers and first responders in emergencies — with illuminated tape on the steps to guide users in case of a power failure. Also, built-in antennæ will allow first responders improved communication.
Window frames will be enhanced and glass panels fortified.
Two air-filtration systems will be installed throughout the building.
The tower’s water capacity to fight fires will be distributed throughout the structure and 20 percent greater than required by code.
Hometown roots
Lewis, who lives in Irvington in Westchester County, often visits his hometown, where much of his family and friends still live including his mother, Bobbie Lewis. He is also an Eagles season-ticket co-holder and can be found in the stands cheering the team with his 16-year-old son, Sam. Bobbie Lewis said during an interview that her son exhibited precociousness at a young age, including a penchant for reading and painting. The mother, who is the original owner of Love From Home, a cookies and gift shop formerly in Narberth and now in Merion, credits his design skills to her family’s lineage. “My father was a contractor and builder and I feel like his skills went directly to Ken,” said his mother by phone last week. She looks forward to the day the 1,776-foot-tall tower is dedicated. And what will she tell her son that day? “I won’t be able to talk,” says the proud mom.“I’ll be speechless.”
Local Business Leaving Mark on NYC Skyline - The company is providing 15,000 windows for the building. They're about 170 inches tall and 70 inches wide. “We installed special equipment just to handle the mere magnitude of those glass sizes or unit sizes,” said Viracon Marketing Manager Christine Shaffer. But revealing how exactly they're made isn't allowed for security reasons. Viracon can only say the windows are built strong enough to withstand many attacks. “There's features within the glass that if breakage were to occur it doesn't allow the window to fall out of the opening. Now they're wrapping up production.
The windows are being shipping out for installation in the Freedom Tower starting next month. Senator Amy Klobuchar toured the plant Thursday, getting a first hand look behind the scenes. “We lost a number of people and that we can be a part of memorializing a tragedy, but also moving on with these beautiful new buildings. I think it's truly an honor and a tribute to Minnesota,” Klobuchar said. Even employees are feeling a sense of pride. “Anyone can go out to New York to see that, something that we've done and are proud of, show your family and kids,” said Viracon Production Supervisor Jeff Giesea. Call it a window of opportunity, helping to remember all who were lost on 9/11, all in a days work.
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.”
Schoolgirl Holly hailed a lifesaver: Schoolgirl Holly Clayton has been hailed a heroine after she saved the life of a seriously ill window cleaner. The nine-year-old calmly raised the alarm when she spotted family friend Mark Hobson, 45, slumped in his van in a pub car park. Paramedics were called to bring diabetic Mark round from what he described as the worst "hypo" attack he had suffered in 20 years. Insulin-dependant Mark, who needs four injections every day, said: "She's my heroine. "I'm 45 years old and I've done quite a few things in my time, but I've never saved anyone's life. She's done it at nine-years-old. It was all thanks to Holly – she saved the day." Hoole St Michael's pupil Holly was walking from her home in Anchor Drive, Hutton, near Preston, to the local shop when she noticed Mark parked in his van outside the Anchor pub. She thought he looked unwell and when saw he was still there on her way home she ran home to tell her father, James. Her next stop was the home Mark shares with his parents in The Dellway and they all went to the car park to try to bring him round. But with the condition being worse than usual, an ambulance was called. Thankfully, Mark regained full consciousness and did not need hospital treatment. Mark, who had not eaten breakfast that morning, said: "My blood sugars must have dropped and I went into hypoglycaemia. You can actually die from it if you're not treated. "Normally I can feel when my blood sugars have dropped so I deal with it myself but, on that day, I didn't feel it coming on, it just hit me all at once." Holly, who was born on Christmas morning and has an elder brother James, 15, said: "I was going to the shop and I saw him in his van and didn't see him in a nice way so I ran back home and told my dad. "It's funny because I was actually going to buy me and my dad a bottle of Lucozade each and Mark needs stuff like that to help him." And Holly plans to carry on helping others – but animals rather than humans, as she wants to be a vet when she grows up. Grateful Mark, who had just stopped for a cup of coffee, gave Holly some money and a box of Heroes chocolates to say thank you. He also wrote to Holly's school to thank her for her brave efforts and she has been given a special headteacher's award for her vigilance. Headteacher Kathryn Melling said: "Holly is a lovely, happy child who is always so caring of others. "We are so proud of her to be so quick-thinking and courageous." Holly's coal merchant dad James, 53, said: "If he had been left and nobody found him, he could have died because it was one of the worst attacks he'd had. " For a girl of nine, it was great presence of mind."
Remembering 9/11: Fabian Soto, 29, was a window cleaner at the World Trade Center. A native of Ecuador, Fabian believed in living for the moment. His wife, Elda says Fabian believed he would die young. Nevertheless, Fabian obviously kept his eye on the future; he worked extra hours to bring his wife to the United States, and was saving to bring his son, who remains in the care of grandparents in Ecuador. When the Trade Center was attacked, Fabian was washing the windows of the observation deck.
Roko Camaj, 60, was a hero when the World Trade Center was first attacked--in 1993. When a bomb sent smoke pluming throughout the towers on that occasion, Roko covered his mouth with a sponge so he could breathe, then helped a woman trapped in a stairwell to safety. A window cleaner, Roko loved his work--delighted in hanging at breathless heights over New York City. He was once featured in a series of children's books on dangerous occupations titled "Risky Business."
Ledua slings for a living: Once condemned by society as a criminal, Ledua Cagilevu has picked up the pieces of his past and used it to generate a better way to survive. He admits the work he does is risky, but it's something he's adjusted himself to so he can survive and support his young family. Unlike any other ordinary jobs, Mr Cagilevu spends the whole day mostly suspended on ropes from the exterior of high-rise buildings around the capital city. He specialises in maintenance work that includes welding, cleaning, painting and carpentry on the outside of Suva city's buildings. Mr Cagilevu said he met another former inmate and started a company know as Specialist Access Service design to do work in those hard to reach places on high rise buildings. "I've been doing this job for the past ten years with help from my colleague and boss Amasai Koroi, he had special training overseas and returned to start a company in Fiji," he said. "This job changed my life around from crime." Mr Cagilevu supports his wife and three children - two of whom attend primary and secondary schools in Suva. The Fiji Times met Mr Cagilevu and his crew working at the Pacific House's nine-storey building in Suva, suspended from ropes fastened to safety straps. Two men suspended on the exterior of the building began washing from top to bottom. Each worker equipped with window washes, a hose pipe and long wooden-handle scrubbing brushes -- swinging from side to side as pedestrian awe from below. "We conducted similar work at Fiji's tallest building, the Reserve Bank, other high-rise buildings like Tanoa Plaza and Suvavou House. "We hardly travel out of Suva unless otherwise because all the high-rise buildings are here," he said. "This is a good job and it pays well. On my first day I was a bit shaky, but now I not afraid of heights anymore. I've become used to it," he said.
A fellow worker at the World Financial Center site where a cherry picker toppled over today, sending two window washers to their doom, said he saw fluid leaking from ill-fated machine just a week ago. The so-called "man lift" fell over at about 12:45 a.m. Cousins Darin and Robert Fabrizio were cleaning the glass near the building's famous Winter Garden when the massive unit suddenly tipped over. They were rushed to New York Downtown Hospital, where they were pronounced dead early this morning. Officials said that they were about 40 feet in the air when the tragedy occurred. It wasn't clear if one or both of the men were in the vehicle's basket. Today, investigators from the federal Occupational Safety and Heath Administration and the New York State Department of Labor were at the downtown site, investigating the incident. Neither agency could explain the cause of accident. "We're going to be looking at the equipment itself, the mechanical parts, talking to witnesses," said Department of Labor spokesman Leo Rosales. But one worker at the site said he saw the cherry picker being serviced last week. "It was leaking fluid," he said. "But it was fixed." Police said that Darin Fabrizio, 37, lived in Milford, Pa., and Robert Fabrizio lived in Las Vegas. One worked for Total Building Services of Linden, NJ, and the other was his cousin, a retired window washer, the company said. The orange and yellow cherry picker has a four-wheeled base with a motor, and a long scissoring arm with a basket on the end. The arm can extend about 80 feet in the air, and it is commonly used to wash the windows on the lowest floors of high-rises. Rosales said that the World Financial Center had the proper permits to operate the lift for window washing: See yesterday.
ANOTHER HEADLINE TELLING OF THE TRADEDY: Two window washers working across the street from Ground Zero fell more than 40 feet to their deaths early Tuesday after their cherry picker tipped over and catapulted them through the air, officials said. Investigators believe the cherry picker rolled over a dip in the pavement, causing it to topple and eject them from the truck bucket as they cleaned the windows of the World Financial Center, a police source said. Cousins Robert Fabrizio, 35, and Darin Fabrizio, 37, both died at New York Downtown Hospital minutes after the 12:45 a.m. accident, police said. "I heard a boom," said a maintenance worker who was buffing the floors inside 2 World Financial Center as the cousins cleaned the skyscraper's exterior windows. Other workers ran to the cherry picker, which had flipped onto its side on the inclined sidewalk outside the building. "I saw them on the [ground]. ... There was a lot of blood on their heads and faces," said the shift supervisor, Alex Garcia. "I saw one of them trying to breathe, but the other one didn't move." Darin Fabrizio, a longtime window washer, was engaged to be married this year, according to a woman who answered the phone at his Milford, Pa., home. "The family is really hurting," said the woman, who declined to give her name. Other relatives said Robert Fabrizio split his time between Staten Island and Las Vegas. Both cousins worked for Total Building Services of Linden, N.J., a cleaning service that had been hired by Shepard Industries of Cedar Knolls, N.J., to wash the skyscraper complex's windows. An employee who answered the phone at Total Building Services said, "There's really no story here" before ending the call. A spokeswoman for Shepard Industries expressed her condolences to the Fabrizio family but declined further comment. A state Department of Labor spokesman said the agency was investigating whether the cherry picker or the company had received any previous violations at the World Financial Center site.
Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11 Jan Demczur relates & features in this book on its re-release how he used his window washing tools to save himself and an elevator full of people.
The men knew they had to break through the wall, but no one had a knife or any other tool. That's when Mr. Demczur thought of his squeegee. He took off the handle and started scratching the wall. "He kept working at it with this squeegee," said Alfred Smith, one of the occupants of the elevator. "It was like he was meant to do that… like he had a willpower that we are going to get out of here." The four men took turns and finally dug deep enough that they were able to kick through the wall to a 50th floor bathroom. The men then fled the building, only five minutes before it came crashing to the ground.
Demczur couldn't have imagined he'd tell this story to so many, or that his squeegee handle and uniform would become a part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Where only today, a window cleaner has fallen at least 50 feet to his death. D.C. Fire Department spokesman Alan Etter says rescuers were called to the museum on the National Mall about 10 a.m. Thursday. It's not clear whether the man's safety harness failed or whether it had been engaged properly when he started work.
