When we all have our special day, the one hope is that it goes off without a hitch. A pair of North Carolina newlyweds have a memorable story to tell when they along with members of their wedding party were rescued from a hotel elevator.
Panav and Victoria Jha were celebrating after their marriage ceremony when their elevator at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Charlotte stopped between floors. “We go up maybe five feet and then just stopped,” Panav Jha said. “The door was slightly ajar, so I was like, ‘Hmm, that’s not normal.'”
The Charlotte Fire Department posted on Facebook that they responded to the scene. They quickly realized that it was a special situation that they were getting themselves in.
“We went through all of the normal troubleshooting that you do on an elevator call and none of that was working so that’s when we realized we were going to elevate it to what it ended up being, what was a rope rescue,” firefighter David Budd said.
The firefighters lowered a rope from the next floor up and had to rescue the bride, groom and wedding party one at a time. With their wedding attire still on, the group was freed from the elevator after about two and a half hours.
“We put them in what’s called a hasty seat. It’s just a simple seat that hooks around them and we hook them up to our rope rigging system,” firefighter Michael Claycomb said. “They get raised up from there and it’s a simple process for them, at least. For us, it’s a little complex.”
“It was wild, but a crazy, fun, memorable experience that’s one for the books,” Victoria Jha said.