They were trapped in a flooding elevator — on the World Trade Center’s 70th floor, video shows

A handful of people were trapped inside two World Trade Center elevators Tuesday, according to NBC New York, as the building’s leaking air conditioning system sprayed water into the stairwell and into at least one stalled elevator.

“All of a sudden I started seeing water drop out the top of the elevator, it started slowing down, the lights started flashing and it just stopped,” Philip Pessutti, who was trapped in an elevator, told CBS New York.

Video recorded inside one stalled elevator — stuck between the 69th and 70th floors, according to the New York Daily News — shows water rushing in as the lights flicker and smoke pours in.

The World Trade Center is the tallest building in the U.S. and the 6th tallest building in the world, standing in lower Manhattan at the site that once housed the twin World Trade Center towers, before they were destroyed in the September 11 attacks in 2001. The office building is more than 100 stories tall.

“There is water rushing in the elevators on the 82nd floor of the WTC,” Emily Singer, a reporter for Mic, wrote on Twitter. “You can hear it. Some people are in the elevators. This is terrifying.”

Another video of incident shows water as it leaks into the stairwell at the 85th floor of the World Trade Center.

Water flooding the stairways set off the building’s alarm system and halted the two elevators with passengers inside, according to building spokesman Jordan Barowitz.

The leak was the result of a broken pipe on the 88th floor, according to CBS New York.

“It was pretty terrifying, didn’t know what it was,” Pessutti told CBS. “My feet are still wet actually.”

Three people were safely removed from the stuck elevators, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told NBC. They were taken to the hospital for evaluation.

After firefighters rescued trapped passengers around 12:30 p.m., World Trade Center officials took to the building’s public address system, according to the Daily News, announcing: “The leak has been addressed, and everything is safe.”

Workers at the skyscraper were ordered to shelter in place. But it looks like they took the whole ordeal in stride:

This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 12:57 PM with the headline "They were trapped in a flooding elevator — on the World Trade Center’s 70th floor, video shows."