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Posted on 04/21/2008 10:33:36 AM PDT by EveningStar
NEW YORK - A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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41 hours? I bet he did too.
I would freak out after an hour.
You pinged me to a thread that’s gonna take me 41-hours to read? Wait, I’ll turn off “24...”
Shenanigans ping...
Can’t seem to get to the video from the link. Seems like everything I click on is an ad, not the video.
(I really hate Yahoo)
I already have a somewhat unreasonable level of fear of elevators......
Aha. I found it on the second link.
WoW I just saw the video. I would have had a panic attack, no doubt about it.
I second that! I really have an unreasonable fear of elevators, and I am normally very rational, just ask my husband :)
Actually, this is very sad but it got really bad after the flooding here in Houston. A woman from my Dads office waited out most of the storm in her office downtown and left to go home taking the elevator to her car in the parking garage. The parking garage was flooded up to the ceiling, she had no idea and took the elevator down. She didn’t make it. I hate elevators.
Awesome. That should win some movie award for a short film.
Youtube version of it if people can’t see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gXcTUF8zCI
I like when he pulls every last scrap of paper out of his wallet out of boredom.
I have a fear of elevators, too. Years ago, I was working in a Dallas, TX highrise and took the elevator down for lunch. Before I could hit a button, the elevator went in a free fall down 8 stories to the bottom. When I got out, I was a nervous wreck. There were some men working on the adjacent elevator and they looked shocked when I came out. For months after that I walked up eight flights to work.
Betcha he takes the stairs whenever possible.
Youtube is your friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bMhNI_TY8
That is good - sort of like a Charlie Chaplin movie - although not as funny. (Except for the little sign they put up at the end!)
That sounds like a design flaw. Why would it be possible for a machine designed to carry humans to go underwater? There should have been a water level override of some sort.
Never been stuck in an elevator but I was stuck on an escalator for a couple of hours once.
I would have been stir crazy, probably from rage alone.
Who was assigned to monitor the security cameras? Surely a building this big in New York city has active security?? Didn’t the guy go to the bathroom in 40+ hours? How much compensation did the guy get from being held hostage?
I know, you see the others being worked on while he is sleeping and doing nothing. He showed amazing control of his uh, bodily functions.
I mean, if your alone in a elevator you can’t blame anyone else. And god knows exactly how long your gonna be in there. Incredible.
So do my sister and I. We were stuck in an elevator when we were very young.
I only get on elevators if there is no other choice, and never in parking garages.
If only I had 41 hours to waste!
I got stuck in an elevator in Quebec. I forced the doors opened and said to no one in particular that I was getting off. They all followed me. I nearly freaked out when it first stopped; do not want a repeat.
Video on youtube said he was a smoker. Don’t elevators have smoke detectors? Seems having a smoke would have been enough to get someone’s attention...
If not that, how about taking off your shoe and making some noise instead of just waiting? Especially if you can hear the nearby elevators moving up and down in the adjoining shafts...
Having the brick wall behind the doors when he finally pulled them open must have been a real drag.
Up and Then Down: The lives of elevators
The New Yorker article associated with the video is pretty interesting, albeit a bit long.
There are a lot of details unrelated to this man's story, but it's worth a read.
That’s great. I can’t believe he didn’t have a few smokes. How did he relieve himself?
Worse yet, he stepped onto the elevator after spending the evening feasting on curry chicken and black coffee.
He didn't pry the elevator doors open half a dozen times just to see if he'd magically moved.
You can see him holding the doors open with his feet while his hands are, um, out of view.
Good call and I have to admit that is a smart move.
From the article:
White sued the managers of the midtown skycraper and the elevator maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.
Here's what I skimmed to learn: After opening the elevator doors, he peed down the shaft between the elevator and the cinder block shaft wall. Also this:
He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.
Quite a sad tale in the end.
Are you from A&M?
One youtube comment said he used it when he was opening the doors
Not nearly as funny as the commercial with two liberals "stuck" on a stalled escalator!
Regards,
GtG
Yes, it is. I would have posted that excerpt as you did, but I think we aren't allowed to post even excerpts from The New Yorker here.
D'oh. Moderator, please remove if inappropriate.
I got stuck on an escalator for 4 days.
I hate you.
I hate you too.
When I was eight months pregnant, I was working on the 8th floor, 3-11 shift, in a hospital. I got on the elevator to go home and it immediately started jerking. I pushed the button to stop it. Took a few deep breaths, restarted the elevators, it started doing the same thing. It was going down, but very jerkily. So, I stopped it again. I was alone on the elevator.
I picked up the phone. A man answered and I told him where I was and what happened. “But- but- they were supposed to have locked down that elevator!” he said. He was a bit excitable. I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell him I was pregnant. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you off there.”
Fortunately, I am not claustrophobic.
I waited. And waited.
I really couldn’t hear much. There was an air vent running, and that was about all I could hear. I kept listening for someone knocking on the outside but never did hear anything. I occasionally knocked on the door, but made surprisingly little noise.
I gave it 45 minutes, was still there, still heard nothing that sounded like rescue, so I picked up the phone again.
The same man was on the other end. I thought, this time, he was going to have a heart attack. “I thought they got you off of there!!” He sounded in a panic. He assured me that this time, they would get me off the elevator. Finally I did hear a noise, and banged on the door for all I was worth. When the door was pried open, it was about 5 feet off the floor, on the 5th or 6th floor if I recall. The security guard and maintenance guy pulled a chair over, I got down on the elevator floor, and they helped me wiggle my very pregnant self out of the elevator onto the chair and then down.
The security guard said “Wasn’t there a sign on the elevator door?”
“NO!” (Yeah, right, I’m stupid enough to get onto an elevator with an “out of order” sign).
“Oh. Well, there was a sign on the first floor.” (Sure, I could see that from the 8th floor, all right).
It turns out that the guy I’d talked to on the phone had called them, they’d knocked on the elevator door a couple of times, hadn’t heard anything, so they’d just locked the elevator down and gone about their business. Where they thought I’d gone in the meantime, I’m sure I don’t know.
I was fine. I’m still not claustrophobic and still have no problem with elevators. My husband, who had been waiting outside the hospital for me all this time and could not locate me, was in a panic, but he recovered. I hope the guy on the telephone did, too.
Thank goodness for cellphones!
“Never been stuck in an elevator but I was stuck on an escalator for a couple of hours once.”
Aw, cry me a river! I once tripped while on the “up” escalator and fell down stairs for an hour and a half!
I was in a building once where they installed a forty story elevator in a twenty story building. There I was, stuck 200 feet above the roof.
Fortunately I had two ten foot ropes with me. I would take the top rope, climb down ten feet and tie it to the bottom of the other. Did that until I got down.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten to push that big red button that says "Push in Case of Emergency". So I had to climb all the way back up, push it and climb back down again.
I was once locked in a malfunctioning elevator for about 90 minutes at the university I attended. As soon as it had shuddered and jolted to a halt, I’d pressed the emergency button, which activated a direct intercom to the police. They assured me help was on the way, so I just relaxed. Or tried to.
As time passed, I started getting a little nervous, but addressed it by singing stupid old songs. “All alone/by the tel-e-phone/waiting for a call/from yoooooouuu...” Let me be the first to assure you that I cannot sing, and listening to me is painful for normal humans. And what I did not know was that the intercom to the cops, once activated, latches on. The poor dispatcher had to listen to me warbling for the next hour.
Might’ve sped up my rescue, though...
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