How a Squeegee Handle Became a Life-Saving Tool on September 11, 2001

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."

Read more from a previous blog here. (+ video)

Uniform donation: Jan Demczur poses with his uniform and squeegee handle as he donates them to the National Museum of American History.

In Remembrance

"I was drawing a cartoon for my window cleaning cartoons series…Watching every thing unfold as if I was there…The act of terror was not what bothered me the most.  It was this anonymous Woman’s face in the window that did the most damage…So much that even now at 9:59 a.m. 2012 I still can’t get her face out of my memory!" Chato Stewart.

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.

The Window Cleaners Escape - A 9/11 Story

A stunning tale of escape traps its hero in replay: JERSEY CITY, N.J.

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.

Window Cleaning News

Fall from height warning given by former window cleaner: A former West Midlands window cleaner who broke his hip and wrist when he fell from a ladder has added his weight to the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) efforts to eliminate workplace injuries. Ken Bradley, 63, was cleaning the windows of a house in Dudley in July 2006 when the ladder slipped and he fell. "I felt the ladder slip from under me and I grabbed a window to try and stop myself from falling. But I couldn’t reach. I don’t really remember much after that until I woke up in hospital but I do know I was lucky to escape with the injuries I got," he said. Brian Martin, HSE inspector, said that Mr Bradley's accident shows that any fall from height can have devastating consequences. The HSE recently re-launched its slips, trips and falls campaign, which aims to make people aware of the risks of working at height, among other workplace dangers.

Police in the Driffield area are urging possible victims to come forward after police arrested a man for fraud by false representation. Police have arrested a 27-year-old Driffield man in connection with a number of alleged offences. It is alleged a man knocked on several doors in the Driffield area on Thursday 04 February between 1545hrs and 1630hrs, claiming to be the residents' window cleaner and asking for payment. It is alleged some home owners paid the man a sum of money, whilst others became suspicious and refused to pay the man. The 27-year-old man has been released on police bail, pending further enquiries, until a date in February. PC Simon Marshall said: "We have had many victims coming forward with regards to a man alleging to be their window cleaner.

Missing man found: A 33 year old man who had been missing for two weeks has been found safe and well. Police appealed for help in tracing window cleaner Alexander Wileman after he went missing from his home in Albermarle Drive, Wantage, on Wednesday, February 3. Police spokesman Daniel Donovan said Mr Wileman was found safe and well at Victoria Station in London at about 11am today. He is currently being driven to an Oxfordshire police station. Members of the public were thanked for their assistance in trying to find Mr Wileman.

Frost-bound building firms get cash help: Building groups, gardening companies and window washing firms can claim government help to pay workers who have been left without anything to do because of the long period of frost. Social affairs minister Piet Hein Donner has agreed that companies which have been affected by the wintry weather can apply for temporary unemployment benefit (ww) for staff for February and March. Some 400 claims have already been made and thousands are expected, the Financieele Dagblad reports.

Bus riders now shivering on the curb at Fifth Avenue and State Street in downtown La Crosse could have been using a heated transit center blocks away — had its construction gone as planned. But passengers and city officials who’ve waited more than 15 years for the transit center will wait at least another eight months. The Grand River Station, bid for about $21.6 million, is about eight months behind schedule and $2 million over budget, though still within the contingencies for the project. The project has had 24 change orders to date, some small — such as $2,000 for sprinkler revisions or an additional fire valve hose — and some pricier, such as $109,000 to install window washing equipment. Many of those, Hutchens said, are the result of incomplete architectural information from the start.

A Turkish investor has brought the basic ‘Roomba’ model of US company iRobot to the market, selling 500 units in only 45 days. Ali Tan Şerbetçi says the company plans to sell its products in the Middle East through Turkey. iRobot, a United States-based company with a 75 percent market share in the global home robots market, has entered Turkey with its “Roomba” model. The robot, reminiscent of a Frisbee, has a diameter of 30 centimeters and a height of eight centimeters. The robot is able to calculate the layout of a given area and clean it without human intervention. The 'Roomba' reminiscent of a Frisbee, has a diameter of 30 centimeters and a height of eight centimeters. The “Scooba” model, which uses water and detergent, will be on the Turkish market in April and will sell for 1,200 liras. “Scooba was designed for working couples, families with children, those who have pets, elderly people and the disabled,” Şerbetçi said. “It brushes and washes an area of 80 square meters and completes its cleaning without touching carpets and the like.” After Scooba, the company plans to introduce window cleaning and security robots to the market.

Ultra-thin glass coating for buildings on the way to UK: German company says new product is green and suitable for almost any surface. An ultra-thin coating is being promoted as the next big thing for protecting the surfaces of everything from hospital equipment to buildings. Called Liquid Glass, the flexible and breathable glass coating is being marketed by its German maker Nanopool as a coating for wood, stone, fibre, plastic and glass and ceramics.
The coating is approximately 100 nanometres thick (500 times thinner than a human hair), and according to the manufacturer it is food safe, environmentally friendly and can be applied to almost any surface. The coating leaves surfaces easy to clean and anti-microbially protected. Neil McClelland, UK project manager for Nanopool explained some of the principles behind the product, saying, "In essence, we extract molecules of SiO2 [silicon dioxide] (the primary constituent of glass) from quartz sand, and then we add the molecules to water or ethanol." Liquid Glass is on the market in Germany and will soon be available in the UK. It has already been trialled for the protection of monuments in Turkey, including the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.

A plane crashed into a Northwest Austin building that houses federal offices about 10 this morning, injuring several people and sparking a fire that sent plumes of smoke into the air that could be seen for miles. A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the crash, at the Echelon 1 building in the 9400 block of Research Boulevard, was “apparently a criminal act.” Austin Fire Department Division Chief Dawn Clopton said that the FBI would be taking over the investigation. Joe Williams, co-founder of the company, and Cynthia Reed, her boss, ran to a nearby truck with window washing equipment and ladders. “By some miracle there was a truck that was for cleaning windows and there were ladders,” Olivarez said. “They were putting ladders up against the building trying to get people out,” Olivarez said. “It looked as if they couldn’t get out, like both the floors were on fire. There was smoke protruding out of all the windows. It probably took about four minutes for the entire parking lot to be filled with smoke.”
They began to get out people until fire trucks showed up with their own ladders, she said.

Window Cleaner Knew: A second long-running business in Birmingham’s Brindleyplace has been refused a lease renewal amid claims the landlord could damage the long-term success of the district. Spiritual health shop Zen is the latest tenant to be turned down by the British Airways Pension Fund after hair salon Umberto Giannini was told it too would have to leave. They claimed they were the last to know and even a local window cleaner was aware plans were afoot to “kick all the smaller people out”.

In celebration of Black History Month, University of Rhode Island students and faculty attended the Black Inventors Exhibit on Tuesday, to pay tribute to and learn about the famous inventions of lesser-known black inventors. The exhibit showed that without black inventors, we would live in a world without traffic lights, mops and golf tees. Sandra Lamb, co-founder of the organization, said some of the tools featured, particularly the early technology, are from Africa, which she bought from a flea market in Massachusetts. The exhibit also displayed simple inventions like a window cleaner and a lemon squeezer.

For Mayor: Don Marsh: I'm Don Marsh, and my wife and I have been married for 32 years and raised both our children here. I am the owner of Marsh Window Cleaning, and I've spent the last 29 years serving the private sector in a position where what matters are positive results that can be seen with the naked eye. This is the kind of bottom-line-driven governing and transparency that I will bring to City Hall.

Giuliani also spoke about 9/11, said youth council member Garrett Weeks, and told the audience it was a day where a lot of people showed their leadership skills. One example he cited was an event that took place on an elevator in the World Trade Center. The power went out after one of the hijacked planes slammed into Tower One, Giuliani said. This caused the elevators to stop working. Six men were on one of the elevators. Most of them were executives with the exception of window-washer Jan Demczur carrying his bucket and a squeegee. As the men were trying to figure out how to get out of the elevator, Demczur realized they could use the pole on his squeegee to pry open the door so he directed the men in helping him. The elevator opened to a thick wall. Demczur took the lead again and took the sharp edge of his squeegee handle to scrape away the wall. After digging through three layers of drywall they were able to free themselves from the elevator. Demczur is not only considered a hero, but a leader as well.

Tower Stories

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.