In his 34 years with the New York City Fire Department, Captain James Melvin has experienced his fair share of malfunctioning elevators. But Melvin never witnessed the horror of what happened on Sunday morning on Staten Island.
Melvin described the situation with a hint of fear and amazement in his voice: Two construction workers were stuck in an elevator that was filling with water.
The construction workers were on a project in the former State Island Hotel in Graniteville, when at approximately 9 a.m., the two men became trapped when the elevator doors did not open.
The two men, identified as Windell Admaker and Edward Tyler, began to frantically push buttons for various floors in the hope that the doors for one of the floors would open. “They figured they’d try the basement level,” said Captain Melvin.
On most days that strategy would have been fine; however, the massive rain storm that hit the city led to severe flooding in the basement. And when the elevator neared the basement, it hit water and started to slowly sink, until finally hitting the bottom of the shaft.
By the time the New York Fire Department arrived on the scene, the water had risen to the necks of the two trapped men.
The two men tried whatever they could to escape, but their efforts and shouts proved futile—they were the only ones in the building.
Thankfully, both men were carrying cellphones and able to contact the Fire Department.
Roughly an hour after their initial call, firefighters found the trapped men and were able to rescue them using a narrow ladder that was inserted through the elevator’s emergency hatch. .
