Life Saving Window Cleaner Gives CPR

David Wells, 47, has been hailed a hero after he rushed to the aid of 83-year-old Alan Walker and administered life-saving CPR.

Burnley window cleaner is life-saving hero: A Burnley window cleaner has been hailed a hero after he saved the life of a pensioner who crashed into a house wall after suffering a heart attack at the wheel of his car. Former paramedic Derek Wells (47) rushed to help pensioner Alan Walker (83) at the scene of the drama in Dunster Grove, Clitheore, on Wednesday. The Burnley dad of six adminstered CPR on the pensioner and brought him back to consciousness before paramedics arrived. Mr Walker was taken to hospital by ambulance.

Window Cleaner, David Wells, came to the rescue.

East Lancs man brings pensioner ‘back to life’ after victim had heart attack and crashed into neighbour's house: A window cleaner has been praised after bringing a pensioner ‘back to life’ when he suffered a heart attack in his car and crashed into his neighbour’s house. David Wells, 47, rushed to the aid of Alan Walker, 83, who fell ill at the wheel of his Honda Jazz in Dunster Grove, Clitheroe, yesterday.

The former Accrington firefighter, of Burnley, administered CPR on Mr Walker after he felt no pulse and saw the pensioner was not breathing. Mr Walker, who was in the car with his wife, Pauline, regained consciousness just minutes before the emergency services arrived on the scene after 11am.

The car reversed onto the front garden of the bungalow before crashing into the wall, causing a large dent and cracking windows. The owner of the house was not in at the time. Mr Walker was last night understood to be recovering at Royal Blackburn Hospital.

Father-of-six Mr Wells, of Gainsborough Avenue, said: “I was cleaning windows in the other street when I heard a loud screech and a very loud bang. “I rushed around to where the noise came from and saw Alan slumped behind the wheel. I know him and I’ve cleaned his windows for the last ten years. “I performed CPR on him and he slowly came round before the ambulance came. “It was a shocking thing to happen and it’s great that he woke up. “It was lucky that I was even in the area at all because the recent weather had delayed my progress and I’m about a week behind where I would normally be. I’m just glad that I could help.”

The air ambulance was called to the scene but wasn’t needed and didn’t land. The road was blocked with police cars, an ambulance and a fire engine while Mr Walker was being seen to by paramedics.

Neighbour Pat Colman said: “If he had not been there who knows what would have happened.”

A car crashed in to Dunster Grove, Clitheroe.

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.

Window Cleaner Shrugs Off Plaudits

Eve Norgan with lifesaver & window cleaner Ivor McKenna.

Heroic dad shrugs off plaudits for saving three-year-old's life - Eve Norgan, three, was fighting for breath after a sweet got stuck in her throat. Despite mum Gaynor's best efforts at the Heimlich manoeuvre the chocolate refused to budge. A modest dad who saved a toddler from choking has shrugged off his heroics - claiming 'it's just something I saw on the TV'.

Eve Norgan, three, was fighting for breath after a sweet got stuck in her throat. Despite mum Gaynor's best efforts at the Heimlich manoeuvre the chocolate refused to budge. The 39-year-old believes her little girl would not be here today without the help of Ivor McKenna who put her over his knee and slapped her on the back until she coughed up the Malteser.

Ivor, a window cleaner, had been shopping at Morrisons in Denton when he heard the commotion in the car park outside. "I just took over. I could see she was turning purple so I said 'give her here' and I put her over my knee and gave her a couple of good slaps on the back and it just came up" he said. "It's all a bit of a blur really. It was just one of those things.

"I don't watch much television but I was ill over Christmas and I ended up watching loads. I saw that performed on a TV programme after a Heimlich manoeuvre failed so that's where I picked it up from. "I hadn't really given it a thought until I saw the little girl choking and decided I may as well give it a go."

Mum Gaynor, Eve and partner Andy.

Dad-of-two Ivor, from Denton, left as soon as he saw that Eve was breathing again but was tracked down after an appeal in Manchester Evening News and our sister paper the Tameside Advertiser. Gaynor, who lives in Haughton Green with partner Andy and son Joseph, 15, said she wanted to say thank you properly. "I've done two first aid courses and I couldn't get the Heimlich to work. Without Ivor's help I wouldn't have Eve and I'm just so grateful to him," she said.

Ivor's partner Sarah Tweats added: "It's just so lucky that he was in the right place at the right time. "He was only there because he'd forgotten the dog food so had to go back in for it. If he'd remembered everything on the list he would already have gone. "It's so scary but he was certainly calm in a crisis. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. I'm very proud of him."