An elevator fell 84 floors in Chicago's Hancock building — with 6 people inside

Six people were stuck in an elevator in Chicago's fourth-tallest building on Friday. But firefighters weren't exactly sure where they'd ended up, seeing as a cable had snapped and sent the car plummeting from the 95th floor. And there was no easy way to find out, the Chicago Tribune details.

A pair of Northwestern University law students, a married couple, and two New Zealand tourists stepped into an elevator in the former John Hancock Center just after midnight Friday. But their ride down soon turned bumpy — "like a flight into Chicago," one student told the Tribune. A clacking noise rattled as the passengers fell, and dust poured into the car. Jaime Montemayor, visiting from Mexico with his wife, told CBS Chicago he "believed we were going to die."

The car didn't hit the ground thanks to a few stable cables, but it was hard to tell exactly where it ended up because the blind-shaft elevator had no windows. One student told the Tribune they felt like they'd only fallen "a few floors." Firefighters eventually found the car had plunged 84.

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Since the firefighters couldn't safely "come down like Batman" on ropes from the top of the shaft, as one firefighter described it, they had to hack a hole in the wall. Three hours later, the six passengers emerged into an attached parking garage without injury. Read more about the extensive operation at the Chicago Tribune.