Stuck Chargers: More than a dozen players, team’s traveling party trapped in elevator

More than a dozen people from the San Diego Chargers organization — including players — were trapped in a hotel elevator on Friday night.

The team was in town for a preseason game with the Dallas Cowboys.

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The group was using an elevator at The Westin hotel in Downtown Dallas where the Chargers were staying.

The elevator was in a “blind shaft” between the third and fifteenth floor, WFAA reported.

An elevator technician tried to get the lift working again but was not able to, so that was when Dallas Fire-Rescue’s Urban Search and Rescue team had to be called in, pulling each person out of the ceiling hatch one by one, helping them into an adjacent elevator to be taken to safety.

KCAL reported that it took about two hours from when it got stuck to getting everyone out.

Coach John Harbaugh was not in the elevator at the time but said it could have been much worse. Luckily one player, he said, took the lead and made sure everyone else stayed calm.

“We dodged a bullet,” Harbaugh said, according to CBS Sports . “I usually think of dodging a bullet of dodging an injury in football. You’ve got to get good at that. You’ve got to get good at making yourself harder to break. That’s a shared experience that brought them closer together. I just missed it, being on that elevator. It was like, ‘Wish I could have been there with those guys.’ But Justin Herbert was.”

Harbaugh said some of those trapped were sweating so much they had to remove their shirts.

“The remarkable things that came out of it was, to a guy, young rookie players, ‘Justin Herbert’s a leader. He was a rock. Kept everybody calm,’” Harbaugh said, according to CBS Sports . “Jeri Fouts told me the same thing, pulled me aside after they got out, just how great Justin was. And everybody kept their poise.”

Harbaugh invited the members of the Dallas Fire-Rescue to eat in the team meal room after everything was done, The Associated Press reported.

The players who were trapped were not identified, other than Herbert, but the team said they would not play in the preseason game, KCAL reported. The Chargers beat the Cowboys 26-19.