Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Spirit of America: Interview of Immigrant Worker Who Saved Many With Sqeegee Before World Trade Towers Fell

Aired October 12, 2001 - 11:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The tragedy at the World Trade Center lead to some amazing stories of heroism on September 11. One of the most dramatic that we've heard is the story of Polish immigrant Jan Demczur, a window washer, who saved himself and everyone in an elevator with him by using a sqeegee.

He joins us now this morning.

You must feel incredibly blessed. You're a very lucky man.

JAN DEMCZUR: I'm a lucky man.

ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what you went through. You thought you were having a normal day at work. You'd gotten into the express elevator in the first tower, and you were trying to go up. It was going to stop between the 67th and 74th floor. All of a sudden, it drops violently.

DEMCZUR: It dropped a couple of floors.

And then what happened?

DEMCZUR: It should have been on 70 to do my job, but the elevator dropped a couple of floors. There was myself and five other gentlemen. We were going up, and in a few seconds, going down. Something's wrong.

ZAHN: The next thing you heard was an intercom message that said there had been an explosion.

DEMCZUR: They said.

ZAHN: And you found out you were on what floor?

DEMCZUR: I don't know, because we didn't know how many floors we dropped. We later found out, when we opened the door, and there was "50" on the wall.

ZAHN: You still have lights on in the elevator. The door is open. You see this wall in front of you. And the only thing you had on you was an instrument like this and your bucket.

DEMCZUR: Yes. I have my other tools in Tower One, for windows, and this is just the sqeegee. If I arrived at drywall, that's not too bad, because I know with my experience in construction, it would be easy to break that. We start kicking, but something was wrong. That's not going anywhere.

ZAHN: Because it was much thicker than that. What did you discover after pounding and kicking, all six of you in the elevator?

DEMCZUR: I discovered it was just crazy. When I hit the wall, I started chopping. But also, the handle was in my way, so I took this off and dug, just made a little hole to find out why this was so strong, and if we could kick and break it. We each took one 1-inch piece. We rotated each other.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: You took turns just pounding and pounding against the wall.

DEMCZUR: The squeegee was from hand to hand going around and chopping all the time.

Finally, we made a hole. (UNINTELLIGIBLE), one-inch thick each one. This is crazy: just make the hole, but now we're kicking again.

We decided to go for a wider cut. That was wide, like 24 inches, three pieces together with a metal on the side to keep them together. Then we started chopping wider, one way, then the other way. And one moment, I dropped my squeegee, and I was very upset because we had this squeegee (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we had lost it.

ZAHN: And you heard it drop. It went down the elevator shaft.

DEMCZUR: It was between the elevator and the wall. My handle was in the side. Some gentleman grabbed it, and just started scratching.

ZAHN: That's all you had, what is in your hand now.

DEMCZUR: That's all we had.

ZAHN: You continued to dig this hole out.

DEMCZUR: Continued to make a hole bigger. When we cut the other side, it was wide, like maybe 14 to 15 inches, and we decided again to kick it, but it was not working. We couldn't break it.

ZAHN: How long did it take you to break through, and then what happened when the first man tried to crawl through? Did it take 10 or 15 minutes to do, or much longer?

DEMCZUR: No, it was longer, much longer because when we were kicking, and I was scratching from the bottom up, and I cut one layer. Then there were two more. Then I decided two men would kick at the same time, giving more pressure, and we did...

ZAHN: These are men that you had seen before, but you didn't even know them by their first names.

DEMCZUR: I see everybody. I know from this, but I don't know names.

ZAHN: When the first man crawled through, did he say to you, We're on the 50th floor, we have got to get out of here? Then you all followed him?

DEMCZUR: There was behind the wall another wall, but it was quick to break.

ZAHN: Another wall after that!

DEMCZUR: That was much easier to break. When we broke it (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this is the 50th floor men's room. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) one guy was very skinny. He said, Unless we get first -- and we pushed him first. He went out and called for help. I told him to check the elevators on the back.

ZAHN: To see if other people were trapped.

DEMCZUR: If other people were trapped.

ZAHN: Then you all ultimately got into the fire escape stairwell. You saw firemen coming up. They were surprised to see you. It took you almost 50 minutes to get out of building. Describe to us what you saw the minute you got out of the building.

DEMCZUR: Going down the stairwell was like 50 minutes. I just left the building, and a medical assistant grabbed me and took me a couple of feet and said sit down here. I just sat down, and he gave an oxygen mask. I put it on my face, and I looked on top, and I saw the fire in the building. And I said, that's not that bad -- to burn the couple of floors -- they are going to rebuild, and we are going to come back.

But for a few minutes, I was looking for another building. I didn't see another building. I said maybe I'm at an angle and unable to see them.

And I pushed one guy on the right side, and he had a mask on his face. I asked, Where is the other tower? He didn't say anything.

The other guy, on the left side, said the building went down. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

ZAHN: And then you just ran, ran, ran.

DEMCZUR: When you look at this instrument, can you believe that that is what kept you alive? You're talking about a 4 to 5 inch piece of metal there that saved your life.

DEMCZUR: It's crazy. It's 18 inches. It's metal, like brass. If you want to make damage, you can. It's strong. It's crazy. It's so very like (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and you can twist it easy.

I decided to use the squeegee because that's the only thing we had.

ZAHN: The only weapon you had.

DEMCZUR: That helped us a lot.

ZAHN: You have told us a remarkable story, and I know life is very difficult for you now. You don't have any place to work, although I am told you have some job offers.

DEMCZUR: No.

ZAHN: I hope you find some peace in your life. And thank you for sharing that story with. It's an absolute miracle.

DEMCZUR: I don't know. For me, it's normal, because I don't respect so a dangerous situation; I just thought from the beginning it may be a mechanical problem. But when smoke was coming up, I thought different. I said, I don't see my wife and children -- but still, I was going normally.

ZAHN: You're a very smart man.

DEMCZUR: After the buildings went down, my brain was crashing with pain. I was shaking, and then it was unbelievable, because I saw the building's trunk fell down.

ZAHN: You know this is difficult to have to relive all this with us this morning. We thank you for dropping by.

DEMCZUR: Thank you very much.

ZAHN: Once again, you're a very lucky man.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com