The New Brunswick Fire Department freed two University students from a malfunctioning elevator suspended in the upper reaches of Rockoff Hall in downtown New Brunswick yesterday afternoon.
The city's fire department was notified by a phone call at 2:38 p.m. that the two residents needed to be rescued from an elevator halted on the eighth floor of the 12-floor apartment building.
Deputy Chief Dean Wournell said Ladder Company #1 responded by 2:41 p.m.
"It was a three-minute response period," Wournell said. "That's the standard response time in the city, and you can't get much better than that anywhere in the country."
Wournell said even with the fast action of the fire department, the residents said they had been trapped in the small space for nearly 20 minutes.
Four firefighters responded to the call and had to shut down the power to the particular elevator and use a specific key to open the elevator door, Wournell said. They then notified maintenance of the problem, so they could repair the glitch.
After retrieving the two residents from the broken down elevator, the firefighters walked out of the stairwell while one of them addressed the crowd of Rockoff Hall residents in the lobby.
"They're out," he said. "But don't use elevator one unless you want us to have to come back here."
Although the building has three elevators, elevator two has been inoperable for some time, and elevator one would be down until its problem could be assessed and fixed, said a maintenance worker at the building.
Just a half-hour after elevator one stopped working, Cook College junior Samana Zaidi said she had been sitting in the crowded lobby for some time waiting to board the only working elevator: elevator three.
"I've been waiting for about 10 minutes, and none of the elevators have opened yet," she said. "And people have definitely been waiting here longer than me."
Zaidi said she would have been willing to take the stairs, but she wasn't able to.
The maintenance worker said the stairs are not an option for Rockoff Hall residents.
"[The residents] can't use the stairs because they're only for emergencies," he said. "If they try to even open the door [to the stairs], an alarm will go off and the fire department will come."
One of the security officers on duty, who would not disclose her name, said the elevators breaking down are frequent occurrences.
"It's not that big of a deal," the officer said. "It happens all the time."
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