A group of 25 primary school teachers were rescued in the early hours of Friday morning after being stuck in the lift of Rotterdam’s Euromast for six hours.

The 185 metre tower had been chosen as the venue for a meal to celebrate the fact the Spectrum primary school had been given the label ‘excellent school’. One of the building’s main attractions is the so-called Euroscoop, a revolving glass panelled lift offering panoramic views of the city.

‘We have taken the school to great heights and we thought it would be fun to celebrate at a great height too,’ teacher Maartje van Daalen told the AD. ‘A number of colleagues had already been in the lift and a number were inside. Another lot of people were waiting. But unfortunately things didn’t go as expected.’

The lift got stuck at a height of 160 metres at 10pm. ‘The Euromast people said they had to get a mechanic from Vlaardingen and we thought we’d be out in an hour. But he couldn’t do it. We were beginning to get worried. How do you get out of a tower like this, by helicopter?’, Van Daalen said.

In the end the lift was brought down centimetre by centimetre at 4am, with the by now anxious and cold teachers inside. ‘It took ages. We were cold, it was dark because the electricity went as well. It wasn’t funny, and the last word hasn’t been said about this,’ Van Daalen said.

None of the teachers was hurt and a number of classes at the school were cancelled to give the teachers a chance to recover, the paper said.

Some social media users have said the Euroscoop had got stuck before but only for a couple of minutes. The Euromast has since closed the Euroscoop for maintenance work.