Many,many,many years ago I maintained elevators that were circa world war I.
Many of the buildings with these elevators were totally powered 440v DC,the generators were giants as they powered the tramways networks in Melbourne Australia.
The controllers for the elevator motors were all also very large with out arc suppression on the contactors so when they opened they drew huge,frightening arcs.
On one occasion I was sent to such a building designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffen,as the elevator was out of order.
After climbing the stairs to the roof found supply failure, only had 220v,down to ground floor,located main switch in cupboard under stairs.
The lobby was very small so that opening the door to the main switch blocked off any exit from the foyer.
So opened the door and found the main 2 blade knife switch glowing ,sputtering flames from a high resistance on one blade. In this space there was also a leaking town gas meter and loose newspaper pages that had previously blown into the lobby. There was also a broom that I used to scrape out as much paper as I could. Fortunately the supply authority depot was less than a 500 yards away,they came opened a box in the pavement at the front of the building removed fuses and I decamped quickly .