News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Jeri Fouts and her son Ryan Burbank were on the 24th floor of the Westin Downtown Hotel in Dallas, Texas, last Friday, August 23, waiting for an elevator to take them down to a birthday dinner with a family friend.
They waited. And waited.
"We almost considered walking down because we were going to miss the dinner," Jeri recalled.
Finally, an elevator pinged, and a door opened onto an express elevator filled with football players from the Los Angeles Chargers. Jeri and Ryan stepped into the elevator car - and into a long, harrowing ordeal.
The Fouts were in Dallas for a preseason game. Jeri's husband Dan Fouts is a sports broadcaster - and a Hall of Fame Chargers and Oregon Ducks quarterback. The couple lives in Sisters and travel for Dan's work during the NFL season. Ryan is Outlaws Class of 2008, and works as a software engineer in Arlington, Texas. Dan was in meetings with Chargers coaches, and was to meet Jeri and Ryan for a birthday dinner of their long-time friend Louie Kelcher. Jeri had a nice card crafted by Central Oregon artist Susan Luckey Higdon.
The elevator carried 11 Chargers, including quarterback Justin Herbert - also a Duck alum - Jeri and Ryan Fouts, a woman named Shon Sasser who was headed down to a wedding party, and a hotel employee named Mario.
"All of a sudden, it just shuddered to a stop," Jeri recalled. "At first you think it's no big deal, it's going to open - but it didn't."
As the occupants realized that they were stuck, they tried to make a call on the emergency phone. It wasn't working.
"I got my phone and had service somehow, which, looking back, seems like a miracle," Jeri told The Nugget.
She called Dan, who called 911. Herbert, too, had service, and contacted someone in the Chargers operations team. They left their phones open so they had outside communication, as Dallas Fire-Rescue responded.
Getting them out was going to be a challenge. Being on an express elevator meant that they were in a "blind shaft" a concrete vault from the 24th floor to the third floor, with no exits. When a player tried to pry open the door a little bit, there was nothing but a concrete wall facing them. When they tried to push out the top, they couldn't because there was some kind of cap over the top of the car.
It took a while and some banging and alarm pushing just to determine where the car was in the shaft. They were throughly trapped at approximately the eighth floor.
"Everybody was very aware that this was an emergency," Jeri said.
Conditions quickly got bad.
"There wasn't a lot of air in there," Fouts said. "It was very warm. There wasn't a lot of air circulating. Thankfully, the lights never went out - though we were prepared for that."
The car was too full for anyone to sit or lie down.
Jeri Fouts with L.A. Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert, who showed his leadership in an elevator emergency in Dallas last weekend.
Herbert and Ryan Burbank worked steadily to keep everyone calm and breathing evenly so as to conserve what air was circulating. Fouts said that Sasser, the woman going to the wedding party, acknowledged that she had issues with claustrophobia, making this a nightmare scenario for her.
"I worked a lot with her just to keep her grounded," Jeri recalled.
One of the players had asthma, and the lack of air circulation was getting to him. They found a spot where a little air was infiltrating and kept him there. Fouts took that Susan Luckey Higdon card out of her purse and made a fan and kept fanning Sasser and the asthmatic player.
"It was a way to make it feel like you had some air moving," Fouts said.
Meanwhile, Dan Fouts was relaying messages to and from the trapped group. He told them an elevator technician was on the way, but he was a half-hour out. That tech couldn't get the elevator going, and another was called for - another half-hour away.
"That was the point where everybody got concerned, because it didn't look like there was going to be a solution any time soon," Fouts said.
Condensation coated the interior of the elevator car from exhalation and sweat. Herbert stepped up to his leadership role, and kept the trapped group working on staying calm and collected as the minutes dragged into two hours.
The technicians couldn't come up with a solution, so it came down to Dallas Fire-Rescue to conduct a rescue. They initially planned to rappel down from the 24th floor, but scrapped that plan as too unwieldy and time-consuming. In planning the rescue, the firefighters calculated weights and determined that the car was below its weight capacity.
Eventually they brought a second elevator into alignment with the express elevator, and a firefighter climbed onto the top of the stuck car.
"All of a sudden, that ceiling peels open, and there's a fireman," Fouts recalled. "And, you know, it was the greatest sight I've ever seen other than the birth of my children."
The rescuers slid a narrow extension ladder into the car, and the occupants helped the claustrophobic Sasser climb out first.
"These Chargers were so composed, and so gracious and helpful," Fouts said.
The rescue crew took four occupants at a time and they took a long step from the roof of one car to another, then rode it down to a lower floor.
Fouts, having been headed for a nice dinner, was wearing high-heeled sandals. She ditched those and made the run barefooted.
"They didn't harness us or tether us to anything," she said. "I don't think there was anything to tether us to."
She held onto a cable and to a Chargers player as they made the decent through the blind shaft to the light of day.
"The doors opened, and there were dozens of firefighters and there was Dan, and (Chargers Coach) Jim Harbaugh, and dozens of people handing people bottles of water - and it felt miraculous."
As befits a leader, Justin Herbert came off last.
Coach Jim Harbaugh spoke at a press conference about the incident after the Chargers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 26-19 on Saturday:
"We dodged a bullet. I mean, I usually think of dodging a bullet of, you know, dodging an injury in football. But, I mean, it was a shared experience. Eleven or 12 of our players were there for about two hours, and that's a shared experience. I mean, brought them closer together. I just missed it, you know, being on that elevator, and it's like, I wish I could have been there with those guys."
Fouts said that the ordeal - which actually lasted for over two hours - was "surreal, and it was harrowing." But she made a new friend in Sasser, and came away deeply impressed by the poise of her son Ryan and of Justin Herbert, and the team spirit of the young players trapped with her.
It really was a team bonding experience - for all of them.
As for riding elevators in the future, Fouts said she can't avoid them entirely - but she'll make sure any car she steps into is not an express.
Editor's note: This story was edited to correct several errors. Ryan Burbank's name was corrected, the spelling as Shon Sasser's name, and the reference to the hometown of the Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers beat the Cowboys in a preseason game on Saturday, not Sunday.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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