Photo by Nathan Jones.

Update: The National Park Service said that 63 visitors were on the observation deck when the elevator outage began. All but one came down via the stairs, but one person was carried down on an evacuation stair chair. Two NPS employees were actually on the elevator when it lost power, and it took 30 minutes to evacuate them.

Original:

Guess what? The Washington Monument is closed again.

After the Monument closed for a couple of days last week due to an elevator issue, it reopened Friday at noon and was fine throughout the weekend. But apparently the electrical issue that was affecting the elevator has come back.

“At approximately 9:30 p.m. last night, the elevator lost power, with no one on board,” National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst said in a statement. According to Litterst, one visitor was stranded on the observation level and had to be escorted down via the stairs. As of this morning, the Monument remains closed as electricians and technicians try to figure out what the hell is going on with the elevator.