Leo Gillick
Getting trapped in an elevator is a situation most of us fear, but few actually ever have to live through.
Videos by Rare
But an employee at the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was trapped for hours. The whole situation was especially complicated due to its location. However, they stayed calm throughout, and with some clever thinking, they were freed.
Complex Trap: The problem lay with the fact that the elevator had trapped the hospital worker between floors. It wasn’t a small distance either. The elevator was between floors 4 and 8, which, due to design, had no access to the elevator.
- It was trapped around 30 feet below the 8th floor. There were no doors giving access to the elevator until the 4th floor. To make matters worse, the elevator’s brakes had locked. This meant that lowering the elevator was out of the question. It would have to be a rope access rescue.
Daring Rope Rescue
Left with very few options, it came down to a rope rescue for the trapped hospital worker in the elevator. Firefighters were left with either breaking down the wall, “which would have caused significant infrastructure damage and destroyed the elevator car,” or using rope access.
Spider-Man Style: So, the firefighters made their choice and cracked on with the daring rescue. Lowering themselves down from the 8th floor, they reached the trapped hospital worker. Opening the top access door, they then attached a harness and pulled the employee to safety.
- “The City of Ann Arbor is fortunate to have highly trained professionals ready to respond to these complex incidents,” the report said. However, they also gave praise to the trapped employee. They managed to stay sane and calm despite being wedged between floors with little chance of escape for hours.
- “The composure of the employee throughout the incident is also to be commended,” the firefighters said. I don’t think many would have been able to stay composed in a situation like this. The sense of claustrophobia would be overwhelming.
Finding a solution to the tricky trapped elevator was no easy task. Having no doors between the four floors that it was wedged made the situation much more complicated.
