When constructing my earthquake preparedness kits I spent some time looking at what happened when folks were in earthquakes both in reasonable infrastructure places (Chile) and less reasonable (Haiti) and non-existant (Turkey). That led to having a 'suture kit' in my day pack because one of the common themes was that there were emergency personnel around who were trying to help but they were often without or short on basic supplies to treat severe lacerations. I have no illusions about being able to suture myself up if I needed it, but I do have hope that I could find someone with the skills to do so. And by having distributed emergency supplies with lots of people, it means that as more people collect the better supplied the resulting group will be.
So back to our flood, a number of buildings include a lift system on the roof for moving heavy things in and out of the building that can't go by elevator. One preparedness solution would be to have a way to utilize that system with a bunch of buckets that would let people do this without carrying up the water directly. If it could be made part of the regular gear that they have on site for doing lifts, that might be a positive thing overall.
Pulley system wouldn't work inside. There isn't a gap in the stairwells and it's not a straight shot up. Going over the side of the building would potentially work but there'd need to be a boom to get it off the side of the building and without some sort of power winch it's a matter of hauling one or two buckets up manually and I think that'd be lower throughput than the brigade system where you get 1-2 buckets in the time it takes to walk up two flights of stairs.
It'd be more a 'thereifixedit.com' solution than something you'd use on a daily basis, but it could (possibly) work.
Don't necessarily need 17 stories depending on internal layout.
Not nearly as much fun, though.