A father who clung to his toddler's hand as the boy dangled 6m from the ground while trapped inside a lift shaft says he didn't believe his son would get out.
Bol Jock was attending a Sudanese community meeting in the three-storey building in Melbourne's southeast on Sunday night when he heard the screams of 18-month-old Wien.
The toddler had been playing with his older cousins at the building in Dandenong and somehow became trapped between the lift and the shaft wall.
Jock said he could hear crying but could not see the boy. "I grabbed his hand until the rescuers came. We didn't believe he could come out."
Country Fire Authority firefighters arrived to find Jock kneeling inside the lift, jamming the doors open with his body, with his arm squeezed into the gap between the lift and the wall, holding the right hand of his son. The boy's left hand clung to a railing.
Jock is believed to have spent about half an hour holding onto his son.
Firefighter Sam Watterson climbed down scaffolding on the side of the left then passed Wien through a human chain of firefighters up the side, over the top and into the lift. He was then handed back to his father.
Wien was taken to the Dandenong Hospital for observation but suffered no injuries, said paramedic Warren Simpson. His stomach and his back were covered in grease and dust from the shaft.
- AAP