If you attend North Atlanta, there’s a good chance that you have been, or know somebody who has been, stuck in an elevator. Within the first weeks of school, North Atlanta had what senior Summer Epps described as “the worst elevator incident yet.”

A total of 24 students were met with a unsettling surprise when the giant metal box got stuck in the limbo between floors 4 and 5 for roughly an hour while attempting to return to class after lunch. As all North Atlanta students should know, the elevator has a maximum capacity of only 15, meaning that the elevator was crammed to the brim with students with virtually no space for movement as they slowly waited for help to arrive.

The group remained calm at first, even a little bit jovial. “The first 15 minutes were, fun, no one was stupid, and everyone was chill,” said senior Zeke Day.

Senior Caroline Cook echoed Zeke’s sentiments. “It was actually kind of fun, we were missing class and people started playing music,” she said.

But the atmosphere shifted when a student in the elevator fell ill and lost consciousness. “That’s when the whole mood changed and we all realized the seriousness of the situation,” said Epps.

Senior Alex Figueroa helped hold the student up and, with the help of a few other people, pried open the doors to the elevator to let some fresh air in. By that point fear and panic settled onto those students as the heat only increased.

Fortunately, help was on the way, in the form of firefighters, medics and elevator company employees. The firefighters then began the slow and grueling process of pulling the students out of the elevator. The sick and panicked students were pulled out first and the more stable students were pulled out later. When everyone was out, one could see the chaos that had been generated by this situation. Multiple students had panic attacks and even those who were seemingly healthy were still shaking and sweating.

Senior Kate Everly had a more positive spin in things saying she was “proud of how everyone handled it.”

Figueroa, the hero of the day, said “I’m just glad everyone made it out safe and sound.”

Thankfully, he’s not wrong on this point. Despite a number of students who were mentally distraught, thanks to the heroism of the students and rescue workers alike, nobody was injured. This does however beg the question of what could be done to stop this from happening again.

With whatever elevator changes North Atlanta plans to implement, let us hope an inceident on this scale will never occur again. No matter what, we should all have confidence in our ability to work together and conquer challenges like the mighty Warriors we are.