TWO MEN TRAPPED IN AN ELEVATOR

Have you ever been trapped in an elevator?  It must be scary but I don’t think it would be as scary as to what happened on August 8^th 2018 to two men who were trapped in an elevator  in a building located in the area of Christie and Bloor  in the  southern part of the City of Toronto, Canada’s largest city. 

Earlier on that day, Environment Canada issued a special weather warning for Toronto, saying that 20 to 40 millimeters (up to half an inch) of rain was possible for the city as a warm, humid air mass was moving over the southern province of Ontario. The city was slammed by what meteorologists were calling a "tropical downpour" that dropped upwards of 50 millimetres of rain on some areas in just one hour. As much as 100 millimeters  of rain were expected.                                                    

Toronto police responded to flooding in the area of Keele Street and Highway 401 with several cars getting stuck. Basements were flooded in the Keele Street and Wilson Avenue area. (Northern part of Toronto) One resident said he had about a metre (39 inches) of water in his basement. One person tweeted a video of water gushing down the stairs in the stairwell of a condo on Queens Quay. (close to the lake) The small creek behind our property (which is just west of Toronto) had risen an inch. Fortunately for me and my wife, the creek would have to rise at least three feet (a metre) in order to flood our basement which would never happen since the creek is quite narrow.

A power outage affected around 16,000 customers in North York but it was restored just before midnight. Hydro One said they lost power at the Finch Transmission station, but crews were able to restore power. 

The two men were trapped in their elevator since it couldn’t be moved up or down because of the lack of electrical power.

Klever Friere, 34, who is the CEO of a drone startup that is located in the building, that he and his co-worker, Gabriel Otrin.27,  took the elevator to a basement garage to move his SUV after being informed by building staff that the parking area was starting to flood.

The elevator reached the basement area.  It didn’t did not come to its usual stop. Instead it splash landed, with a “whoosh.” And then it began to fill up with murky flood waters snd reaching waist-height within minutes and then continuing to rise after that.

Ortin said that “within the first five minutes it was pretty clear what was going to happen.” They were going to drown. Ortin began praying; a process which he said gave him the strength he needed to remain calm.

Friere said that he and Ortin then attempted to force the doors open but quickly realized that their efforts would be futile. He said that at that point they decided that forcing a ceiling panel open in an attempt to get cell service would be their only hope.

He said later, “We were trying to find emergency latches, instructions on how to get out and we were looking for things we could use for leverage to force the doors open but we weren’t able to find any instructions inside the elevator and the emergency phone was dead because of the water coming into the elevator, so our last hope was finding a way to get a cell signal. At some point we just decided that this wasn’t going to be it and we started punching through the panels.”

Friere said that he and Ortin initially stood on the elevator’s hand rails as the flood waters rushed in but later had to break them off and use them to force open the ceiling panel. He said that by repeatedly punching and pushing at the panel they were eventually able to create enough of an opening to put a cell phone through and get cell phone service in order to call 911

“Finally we got reception and then we were on hold,” Friere said. “The first time we had a moment of relief was when we heard there was somebody actually on the other side of the elevator door.”

Just a short distance down the street, Constables Ryan Barnett and Josh McSweeney got the call to give the two men some help. “Nobody’s going to be able to get there soon,” McSweeney said he recalled thinking at the time. “So we went.”  They had reached the building the men were trapped in six minutes after receiving the initial   911 call. 

They arrived at the building and peered down the elevator shaft where the men were trapped. They saw the elevator at the bottom of the shaft.

Barnett later said, ‘The elevator’s hatch could only be opened four or five inches and the men couldn’t get out so we swam down the water in the basement to get the two men out of the elevator.”  

Meanwhile the water level had risen to six feet and there was only one foot of air space left for the two men to breathe. The men were able to keep their heads above water by standing on handrails inside the elevator.  

With the help of two crowbars that workers at the building that the officers found nearby, the officers pried open the elevator doors so that the two trapped men could escape.  The water had almost filled the elevator before the men were rescued by two officers.

 Officer Barnett said, “We could hear them screaming for help.  The water was already atour necks.  We started pulling the door open but it the pressure was too great.”

The two officers  eventually pried open the elevator door and were able to release  the trapped men.

McSweeney said,  “We may have had five or ten more minutes,” But he stressed that while he and Barnett were pulling the doors apart, they weren’t thinking about the worst that could happen. “You’re not thinking of what-ifs or if things are going to happen badly.”

McSweeney said that one of the two men they rescued was in shock. Barnett said the man in shock later apologized profusely for not being able to power himself out of the water.

Friere said that that at that point he was thinking about his 13-year-old daughter, who he was supposed to take to a movie earlier that night but couldn’t due to some issues that came up at work.

He also said, “I was using the elevator buttons as a reference for how quickly the water was rising. We probably had three of four minutes left before it was full,” he said. “In that moment you do think about the people that are going to be affected if something happens to you.”

Ortin said that it probably took about five minutes before he and Friere were able to force open the panel and call 911.   He said that he was forcing the panel open with his hands at first but at some point started using his head as it “was more effective.”

He also said that the elevator’s emergency telecommunications did start working at some point during this but almost immediately shorted out as the waters rose to the level of the speaker

After the rescue was finished, Barnett said he and McSweeney finished their shift, and started washing their clothes, which were soaked with dirty water. Barnett said he went to bed but couldn’t sleep. “It feels good.  I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep because I was very excited and happy. It was why we do this job for.”

Consider what could have happened if a number of things done couldn’t have been done.

First:  If one of them didn’t have a cell phone, they wouldn’t have been able to call 911.

Second:  If they couldn’t have made the hatch opening wider enough to get the cell phone above the top of the elevator, the police may not have received the trapped men’s  911 call. 

Third:   If the two police officers weren’t as close as they were to the building, they wouldn’t have arrived at the elevator in time.

Fourth:   If two of the workers hadn’t left their crowbars on a floor that was not under water, the officers may not have been able to get the elevator doors open.

Some people believe that coincidents are acts of God. I say that they are acts of human beings and/or nature.  However they come about, those four coincidents saved the lives of those two trapped men.