Stephen P. Clark Government Center — Reported Site of 2024 Rescue
A building-wide power outage in Downtown Miami left a woman trapped on the third floor inside a blind shaft elevator on Thursday, triggering a high-angle rope rescue by city fire crews. The woman was pulled free without injury, and Florida Power & Light crews arrived shortly after to restore electricity to the building.
According to the City of Miami Government, the total loss of power caused the elevator to become stuck between floors in a blind shaft — a configuration with no intermediate doors or landings, meaning rescuers could not simply pry open a nearby floor to reach the cab. That architectural quirk forced City of Miami Fire-Rescue’s Firehouse 4 and its Technical Rescue Team to improvise a vertical approach instead, accessing the building from the eighth floor and rigging a high-angle rope system to lower a firefighter five stories down the shaft to reach the woman…