Power cuts leave 14 people trapped in lifts across Cyprus

Nicosia, Cyprus. Rolling electricity outages across Cyprus on Wednesday night left 14 people trapped in lifts, requiring rescue operations by the fire brigade.

Fire brigade spokesman Andreas Kettis said lift maintenance companies and installers bear primary legal responsibility for rescuing passengers trapped in lifts.

Rescue calls across districts

Speaking to Alpha, Kettis said fire brigade crews responded to 14 calls during the outages. Five incidents were reported in Nicosia, four in Limassol, four in Larnaca and one in Paphos.

Emergency evacuation systems

Kettis said power failures can leave passengers stranded in lifts that do not have automatic emergency evacuation systems.

“When this power outage occurs in a specific city or area, all elevators that are in operation, we will probably have to proceed with evacuations as a fire department,” he said.

Responsibility and resources

Kettis said simultaneous incidents could delay response times because of the fire brigade’s limited resources. He added that the law assigns responsibility for rescuing trapped passengers to lift maintainers and installers.