Mayor Miller to the rescue

From the Toronto Star:

Joel Dembe didn’t think he’d end his day by getting stuck on the 18th floor of his office building for two hours — but he definitely didn’t expect Mayor David Miller to call him personally to help.

When the power went out in his office in the TD Bank Tower at King St. W., trekking down 18 floors simply wasn’t an option.

The 26-year-old marketing analyst is in a wheelchair, so when the elevators stopped working, the only thing he could do was wait.

“I just wanted to get home. It happened at the end of the day, when people want to go home anyway,” said Dembe.

He and a manager were instructed to wait by the building’s freight elevators.

A lift would come eventually, they were told, but the priority was getting the regular elevators — some containing trapped people — back into operation.

So Dembe decided to take to Twitter to voice his frustrations. Aiming high, he went straight to the top of the municipal chain: he tweeted Mayor David Miller for help.

“I use a wheelchair and have been stuck on the 18th floor of the TD tower. Send help!” Dembe wrote to the mayor’s Twitter account.

To his amazement, Miller quickly responded, telling Dembe to send his number.

Within 15 seconds of tweeting his digits, Dembe says a blocked number called his cell. It was the mayor.

“He asked me how I was doing, asked if I was safe, and he put me in touch with the fire department,” says Dembe.

He estimates they spoke for about five minutes.

Dembe made clear to both Miller and the fire department that he didn’t have an emergency, but he says it was great to know someone was out there listening.

“It wasn’t so much a joke as ‘Listen, when are we going to get out of here?’ I thought maybe the mayor will help,” Dembe says.

“The fact that he immediately called me, that’s pretty insane.”

When the freight elevator finally arrived, it was more than two hours after the power outage struck. Dembe, his manager and a receptionist who also has mobility issues were the last to leave the floor.