VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A woman trapped in an elevator in a Town Center-area building Wednesday afternoon was rescued after a pair of firefighters rappelled down an elevator shaft from the ninth floor to reach the elevator car, the Virginia Beach Fire Department said.

“Turns out the incident was not a normal incident,” said Captain Craig Brown with Virginia Beach Fire Department.

After getting the call of a stalled elevator in the Armada Hoffler Building on Central Drive at 2:16 p.m., crews arrived less than two minutes later and upgraded the call to a technical rescue incident that involved a person trapped in the elevator just above the first floor, the fire department said.

In normal rescues, VBFD says the team would rescue from above or below the stuck elevator car. Crews did not find an accessible entry point to the elevator car between the first and ninth floors, and due to the elevator’s location, they were not able to use standard methods to get inside of it, the fire department said.

“We had to go way above to be able to go back down,” said Captain Brown.

With the help of the fire department’s technical rescue team, two firefighters rappelled down the elevator shaft from the ninth floor to reach the elevator car, with the operation done under “controlled and secure conditions,” the fire department said.

Just over an hour later, at 3:23 p.m., firefighters were able to remove the woman securely from the elevator and was hoisted up to the ninth floor, and by about 3:33 p.m., everyone was safely clear of the elevator shaft, according to the fire department.

“She’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do whatever you need me to do.’ So, we put her on rope, put her in a harness, put on rope, and when she came to the top, she was more than ecstatic,” said Captain Brown.

Captain Brown added that the technical team prepares for situations like this often.

“It was seamless and it was excellent. Just the fact that we train for this every day and this is a low frequency, high risk operation, and we trained for this on the technical rescue side throughout the years. And it finally came for real,” said Captain Brown.

No injuries were reported.