Five people were trapped inside an express elevator at 60 State Street in downtown Boston on March 3, 2026, after the car stopped near the third floor in a section of the hoistway with no intermediate doors. The elevator is an express unit that runs from the first floor to the 18th floor with no stops between, meaning there are no hoistway door openings along that span of the shaft. When the car stalled near the bottom of that express zone, standard elevator rescue procedures that rely on opening the nearest hoistway door were not an option. There was no door to open.
Boston firefighters responded and determined that the only viable rescue path was from above. Crews lowered themselves on ropes down into the hoistway to reach the stalled car, then hoisted all five passengers up more than 200 feet to an accessible point. Deputy Fire Chief James Greene described the operation in blunt terms: "This was far from routine, having to go out on ropes. It's a risky, dangerous situation." All five passengers were rescued without injury.
For anyone who works in elevator construction or maintenance, this incident highlights a well-known challenge with express elevator configurations in high-rise buildings. Express runs are designed to move passengers quickly past floors that the car does not serve, but that speed comes with a trade-off: long stretches of blind shaft where there are no hoistway doors for emergency access. When a car stops in one of these zones, the rescue options narrow dramatically. The ASME A17.1 code addresses emergency access requirements, but express configurations with blind shafts present scenarios where even code-compliant installations create difficult rescue conditions.
The 60 State Street incident is the kind of event that gets discussed in every firehouse and elevator company break room because it exposes the gap between routine entrapment calls and the high-angle rescue operations that blind shafts can require. Most elevator entrapments are resolved by a mechanic or firefighter opening an adjacent hoistway door and either moving the car to a landing or helping passengers climb out at a door opening. When that option does not exist, the rescue becomes a technical rope operation with all the associated risks of working at height in a confined vertical space. Fire departments in cities with significant high-rise inventory train for these scenarios, but they remain uncommon enough that each one is a serious evolution.
Building owners and property managers at high-rise properties with express elevators should treat this as a prompt to review their emergency action plans with both their elevator contractor and the local fire department. Understanding the specific rescue challenges posed by express configurations in a given building, including the location and accessibility of machine rooms, the availability of emergency access panels, and the coordination protocols between building engineering and fire rescue, is not academic. It is the kind of preparation that determines whether an entrapment in a blind shaft is resolved in an hour or becomes a multi-hour ordeal.