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"Clack Clack Clack Clack" described the sound of your worst nightmare.
Just past midnight on Friday, a group of six people was descending from the 95th floor of Chicago's 875 N. Michigan Avenue, the famous 100-story skyscraper, formerly known as the John Hancock Center, when it was the only one of its kind. Jaime Montemayor, a former tourist, told CBS Chicago.
The group in the elevator had climbed to the 95th floor to visit a posh restaurant with views of the horizon line and he had chosen the express elevator downhill. But suddenly, it started to go a little too fast for more comfort.
This began to become "bumpy", like an incoming flight to Chicago, said a Northwestern law student who was in the elevator at the Chicago Tribune. He passed all the usual stops, falling and falling and falling and falling on 84 floors before stopping suddenly somewhere between the 11th and the 12th.
Then came the noise: "Clack Clack Clack Clack."
Then came dust and dirt, floating in the elevator from the ceiling.
And then came panic.
The aliens began to "panic", told the Tribune law student, who refused to be identified. Some cried, others cried. Montemayor, who was visiting his wife in Mexico City, said he and his wife were standing firm and praying.
"I thought we were going to die," Montemayor told CBS. "We were going down, then I felt we were falling, and then I heard a noise: clack clack clack clack" – the sound of being stuck in a lift .
They pressed the emergency button. The six foreigners – including Montemayor and his wife, two law students from Northwestern University and two others, including a pregnant woman – were stuck in the elevator for about two and a half hours while firefighters tried to find a way to reach them.
The problem? They were trapped in a "blind well", which means that there was no door through which firefighters could enter the well and get to them, said the chief of the fire brigade of Chicago, Patrick Maloney, told reporters on the spot, according to ABC 7. The malfunction had been caused by a broken "hoist rope," or a lift cable, Maloney said. Other cables were still attached, preventing the elevator from collapsing to the ground.
"It was a pretty precarious situation where the cables that broke were above the elevator," Maloney said. "We could not perform elevator lift rescue.We had to cross a wall on the 11th floor of the parking garage in order to open the elevator doors."
Luis Vazquez, a Montemayor friend who took a different lift up to the ground floor, told the Tribune that he could not believe what was happening.
"It's the second most important building in Chicago – and it's the third largest city in the United States?" he questioned. "On the 98 floors, they have no place to open a door – it's the craziest thing."
Finally, firefighters broke through the brick wall of the parking garage, creating a 5 foot by 5 foot hole through which they could see the top half of the elevator.
From inside, the group trapped could hear the firefighters fight their way. One of the law students filmed the moment on video while a weird liquid was flowing from the crevasse of the elevator door and the fire department was working to open the doors.
Finally, just before 3 am, they were saved. None of the six were injured.
"When they opened the door," said Montemayor at the Tribune, "the feeling was," Thanks, buddy! "
A spokesman for the Chicago Buildings Department told the Tribune that the elevator had been last inspected in July and that the cause of the cable malfunction would remain under investigation.
On Saturday, ABC 7 Chicago said the tourists had to climb to the 95th floor in a service elevator operated by building employees while the investigation and maintenance were continuing.
The general manager of the building could not be immediately contacted to comment on the state of progress of the investigation and ongoing maintenance.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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