Freed from a Burning Lift with a Knife
A mind-boggling story from Oregon, with the Victorinox pocket-knife playing the «leading role». A man became stuck in a lift fire and it was only thanks to a Swiss Army Knife that he was able to free himself from the smoke and confined space. This resulted in a boom in Victorinox knife sales in the city. The person involved recounted the events in detail in a letter to Victorinox. By remarkable coincidence his name was MacIver.
«I am a 31-year-old engineer, living in Portland, Oregon, USA, and what I have to offer is more than just an exciting story. The main actors are myself and a Victorinox Swiss Champ. I am writing this letter not to seek fame or honour but to pacify my friends and my family who have been pestering me to send this account of events to you..
Wine, Beer, Money and Art
I’ve carried a Victorinox Champ around with me for many years. It has proven its worth in no end of situations but never more so than on the evening of 3 December 1992. On that evening my wife Morgan attended a Christmas Art-bizarre party (bizarre was the right word). The party was hosted by the tenants of the Mattox Building (1231 NW Hoyt St.). This building houses various studios for photographers, designers, architects etc. I went to the fourth floor of the building, the top floor, where the party was being held and stayed for about an hour. Needless to say, after an hour I became bored and went looking for something more interesting. There are three ways to travel up an down the Mattox Building: a stairwell, a goods lift and a passenger lift. This passenger lift is as old as the building itself which, I imagine, is mentioned somewhere in the last chapter of the Bible. The lift is about one square metre in size and about 2.5 metres high. The inner door consists of a metal sliding grille, the outer one is a very normal door. There is no telephone or escape hatch..
As I was travelling in the lift it began to slow down and fill with smoke. A few seconds later it came to an abrupt halt. I was alone and trapped. The lift continued to fill with smoke. Because there wasn’t much fresh air I had to breathe in the black, acrid smoke whilst the built-in loudspeaker went on playing a violin sonata in the background. The lift had stopped on the mezzanine, just above the first floor. I was able to see approximately ten centimetres of the lift doors on the second floor and almost the whole of the doors on the mezzanine. People gathered on the second floor. They started to talk to me through the lift doors. But we couldn’t see each other. Once they learned that the lift had jammed and I was in danger of slowly but surely choking to death, they called the emergency control centre.
No Escape Route
Meanwhile my friends on the fourth floor noticed the smoke. They quickly realised that someone was stuck in the lift and that a fire had broken out in the lift shaft. They attempted to force open the doors on the second floor to release me. A whole contingent of the Portland Fire Department then arrived. The problem for my rescuers was that at some point over the years the mezzanine had been sealed up. There was no way of reaching the lift doors on the mezzanine – my only escape route. Since no-one could reach me I did what I could to reach them. The mechanism responsible for opening the mezzanine doors had also been put out of action because the floor was no longer in use. Someone had removed the lift door button which had once been there for opening the doors. Otherwise I could have simply pressed it to get out.
Knife Came to the Rescue
Then I remembered my trusty Swiss Army Knife with its pair of tweezers. Three minutes later I had removed the nuts on the door and was at last able to get out of the lift. But now I was trapped in the dead space of the mezzanine. Meanwhile, the battalion of Fire Department people (four large fire appliances, two ambulances and two control vehicles) had put out the fire in the lift shaft and was still trying to reach me. They had battered down doors to reach the floor of the shaft and climbed to the roof of the building to reach me from above.
The police had cordoned off the entire block which had since filled with curious onlookers. I could hear alarm bells ringing and sirens wailing. But there was a window on the mezzanine and that’s where I was finally rescued from and where my martyrdom came to an end. Before then, of course, I had used my Champ once more to remove the hinges from the window. However, in the heat of the moment I left my highly-prized knife on the mezzanine. As the fireman accompanied me down the ladder, the crowd below applauded and I waved. Friends and reporters were waiting for me below. Luckily, a fireman found my knife and returned it to me.
Epilogue
The next morning a radio station telephoned me and interviewed me live. They had read about me in the newspaper and found it amusing that not only had I broken out of a jammed lift and escaped the fire but that my name is MacIver (MacGiver is the name of an American TV hero who repeatedly escapes from hopeless situations, usually with the help of a Swiss Army Knife). So they forced me, still half asleep, to recount my experience on the radio. In the weeks that followed the Swiss Army Knife was one of the most popular Christmas gifts in Portland: “the type of knife used by the guy to free himself from the lift”. I bought the last Swiss Champ in a shop for a friend and noticed that it was on display in the window. The shop owner told me that he had had a run on Swiss Champs following the incident. My parents-in-law were in another shop and told the owner they knew me. He then showed them the newspaper cutting on the incident which he kept in his wallet. He explained to them that every child who had come into his shop wanted to buy a knife just like the “lift escape knife”. Life really is exciting. Yours, Douglas MacIver.»
