Why isn't there a manual mechanism for the door? Why didn't the passengers use an emergency glass hammer? Why isn't there an emergency release for the door?
I'd expect that the passengers may not have known about the emergency releases.
It's also possible the releases failed, but all of them?
The article does a poor job of mentioning that those releases are standard to the vehicle. It's discussed elsewhere in this thread too, where they also provided the Model Y's manual.