Heather Curtis
WMAL
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) The Washington Monument re-opened Wednesday morning after a problem with an elevator sensor forced the evacuation of 63 people from the monument’s observation deck Tuesday night.
“The sensor that tells the doors that there’s no one in the way and its safe to close the doors and it’s safe for the elevator to operate may have gotten out of alignment,” said National Park Service Spokesman Mike Litterst adding this was not the same problem that had the monument temporarily shut down in June.
Kellie Quinn was waiting to take the elevator down from the observation deck when she and others were told the elevator wasn’t working, and they would need to go down the fire escape to get out.
“Surprisingly nobody was upset. Everybody was like, ‘Okay. Well, this is going to take a long time. We timed it actually on our watches. It took us 18 minutes,” said Quinn adding that many people took breathers on benches at the bottom of the monument after the climb down.
Firefighters took two pregnant women to the bottom of the monument as a precaution.
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