HELP! I AM TRAPPED IN AN ELEVATOR FOR REAL

i seem to have set off an alarm, in my mad-button pushing, and now i regret calling for help

there is wi-fi, which is a blessing, because i was on my way to work w. my laptop.

it is not even a good elevator. it is the freight elevator in the back of my condo - i am somewhere between the 4th and 7th floor, upholstered in purple carpeting that smells of mothballs.

STAY CALM!!!!!!!!!!

DON'T PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!

OH SHIT IT'S A FREIGHT ELEVATOR??????!?!?!!

N/M

Are there any loose ceiling panels that you can exploit for escape

Uh I hope you are being helped

i almost brought a banana. i wish i had. or a screwdriver. ceiling panels appear to have been painted over.

don't watch this short film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsjPD4wDmeY

nobody knows i am here...? i texted my friend who lives in the building, but she is probably still asleep.

this is the view from where i am sitting:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/jcoombs/Photo0014.jpg

ARE YOU STILL TRAPPED

going on 20 minutes. the alarm seems to be dwindling in volume, though.

Have you tried this?

http://www.uaf.edu/sunstar/archives/20061121/photos/elevator.jpg

evey single one, at least twice.

Remember to do your isometric exercises, so your muscles do not atrophy. This is U&K.

Don't listen to Aimless, you'll use up all the oxygen!

i sort of have to pee :(

i texted my friend who lives in the building, but she is probably still asleep.

did you call her?

do you have the number for a superintendent or property company? can you look it up?

r u drunk

sober as a nun

since i am in an elevator shaft, i cannot make phone calls longer than 2-3 seconds before service drops. sending texts, apparently, works.

is there a bar onbaord?

skype

if you call repeatedly, presumably it will draw attention to the text

lol 'NETWORK BUSY TRY AGAIN LATER' this is like a scene from

http://www.criteriondvd.com/images/s335.jpg

yeah, now is the time to use your "skype to telephone" feature.

HOW ABOUT NOW ARE YOU STILL TRAPPED NOW

http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/media/elevator.jpg

Welcome to the 21st century, where you can liveblog being stuck in a lift...

nothing better to do

if you have a number you can call, maybe someone here can call them for you

Hey Remy! Keep your pecker up. Have you considered calling 911? Don't cellphones use more power or something with emergency calls to improve signal?

gabbneb otm - that's genius

Yeah, put the address of the building and someone near you can call the police / emergency services, surely?

or come by and knock on some doors

remy, we are about to head out - want me to call the police?

i just texted the higgs to do it - but thanks so much, guys.

I'm going to be cleaning our old place, phone or text when you get out plz.

fo sho

Whatever you do, don't take your clothes off if it gets too hot while you wait. If you are rescued in that state, there could be a misunderstanding.

TEXT FROM THE HIGGS: Bldg mgr says janitor knows yr there & called otis

http://www.tvland.com/shows/griffith/citizens/otis.jhtml

http://thecriticalcritics.com/review/wp-content/images/top10/music_bands/otis_day_and_the_knights.jpg

OTIS!

the higgs recent acquisition of cell phone technology has been justified

amen for that, huh?

(some lady yelled at me that 'salvation was on the way)

Is she going to lower a bedpan on a string to where you are?

Did anyone evry play Elevator Action? It's pretty hilarious.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/c64-games/489-1.jpg

http://ps2media.gamespy.com/ps2/image/article/648/648567/taito-memories-gekan-20050907104635208.jpg

what about like is mission impossible where he's on top of the elevator & it crushes him against the ceiling of the shaft!

Last year a lift at my work fell eight floors. We'd told the building landlord 8374923874923487 times that it was danegrous and he ignored us, and then this poor woman plummeted fucking eight floors. Needless to say legal action ensured the tight bastard actually did something about it.

is the woman alive?

Her work is getting done.

So she's dead? Disabled? That's fucked up, AA.

It was sort of unsettling to find out how common elevator decapitations are. (DON'T read this if you have an elevator phobia, though it's more about the getting-in and getting-out than the being-safely-inside.)

did anyone read the new yorker article about this? or maybe it was...harper's? i can't remember, but it was about elevator history and sociology, sort of, and it talked about a guy who was stuck in an elevator for 42 hours. he still hasn't recovered.

-- the table is the table, Saturday, 30 August 2008 18:10 (Yesterday) Link

Security cam footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bMhNI_TY8

I'm pretty sure that no elevator car has plunged accidentally for, like, 60 years at least is a good sign that the multiple safety precautions they install on them might be trustworthy.

That is fucking insane. i would die.

xp

piper307 (1 hour ago) Show Hide
0 Poor comment Good comment
Marked as spam
Reply
i feel bad......for everyone who had to watch this. Almost as big of a dissapointment as the 8 years of George W. Bush in office

no no no she's fine, just spooked when it happened.

Well that's good news!

Great thread!

This reminds me of an elevator that was in one of the buildings where I was at university. It creaked and groaned and the fluorescent tube in the ceiling kept flickering on and off. That sounds like a boring story, but really it was super creepy and scary, like suddenly being in a horror movie for a couple of minutes.

Actually OK yes it is a boring story...

Dull story no. 2: The bathroom of the place I used to hang out was like that, but with a black and white tile floor. One day someone wrote "david lynch film" on the mirror. The end.

Those sucked, someone get trapped in an elevator again.

an elevator at my old university had a big sign next to it informing everyone that the door wouldn't stop if you tried to hold it back. I thought it was mere paranoia that made me more inclined to take the nine floors of stairs, but these horrifying stories have made me feel sooo much better.

as someone who's been riding 15-20 stories since birth, this thread makes me realize for the first time that an elevator can be an exotic 'other'

FEAR THE ELEVATOR

It was always odd to get in an elevator in Portland, because it had become so unfamiliar; then, one of my first trips back to NYC, I went to some office on the 57th floor (or somesuch), and realized that was more floors than the tallest building in Portland had.

I loved working at a hotel with manual elevator controls.* It was always a point of pride to stop the car dead flush so the guests didn't have to step up or step down.

*On second thought, I hated working at that hotel, but running the elevators was fun. I rescued Patrick Swayze a couple of times by taking him up to his floor in the freight elevator.

Rescued him from women who wouldn't leave him alone at the bar, I meant to say.

I got stuck in an elevator in the UMASS library. Something bad happened with the elevators there last year - I will look it up.
I was stuck with an entire journalism class. One young woman started saying how she has real, diagnosed, claustrophobia.
I mentioned that maybe we should pull the emergency button. And we all looked at the two professors who were also in the elevator.
Like I needed permission. Then I pulled the emergency button and bells started clanging. Then a voice came over the intercom asking if we were stuck.
Lot's of sarcastic resonses boiled up into my brain.

We were there for about 15 minutes.

I still think about the base reaction of looking to an authority figure for permission in an emergency. I'm not much younger than the profs.

I think it's more like looking to an authority figure to make the first move, and when they don't it's like "why don't/can't/won't they take charge of this situation?"

Elevator loses counterweights, flies free at UMass (update)
by The Republican Newsroom
Friday August 31, 2007, 8:00 PM
By DIANE LEDERMAN
dleder✧✧✧@re✧✧✧.c✧✧

AMHERST - An unoccupied elevator slipped free this morning at the W.E.B. Du Bois library at the University of Massachusetts, and rapidly traveled up several floors before stopping at the 27th floor, one floor from the top.

No one was injured, according to UMass police. The library has 28 floors.

Staff heard a loud crash when the counterweights broke free of the elevator just before 10 a.m., causing the elevator car to fly upward.

Patrick S. Daly, executive director of the physical plant, was called, and after an initial inspection determined a bracket that guides the elevator's control cable broke, which released the electric brake and allowed the elevator to release the counterweights and fly up.

A state inspector was also called to investigate and inspected the other four elevators. An adjacent elevator to the one in the accident was pulled from service because of concerns the cables of the two cars could become entangled, said UMass spokesman Edward F. Blaguszewski.

The elevator that broke free was inspected last month. Elevators are inspected annually. The three other elevators were put back into service. The fourth elevator will likely be back in service next week, Blaguszewski said.

All five elevators are due to be replaced over the next two years, he said. The elevators were installed when the library was built. It opened in 1972. A designer must first be selected for the job.

Students, meanwhile, began arriving on campus today.

There's an elevator in the building I work that has part of its top removed. You can see a skylight at the top floor approach nearer and nearer as you ascend in that thing. It's like a space movie.

You're totally right snoball - it's just that I COULD be that authority figure. I'm certainly old enough!

I also love the story about the UMASS elevator because it sounds like the elevator broke free intentionally. Shrugged off its bonds, etc.

The elevators are still broken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQtV7P-L0sk&feature=related

^^^ damn, that's just what I was thinking!

I was involved in this (inaccurately reported) incident a few years ago at a tube station. It was in the morning rush hour so about 40 people piled into the middle lift which then took us up to street level (maybe 30m or 100ft or so). Then the lift just stayed still and the doors didn't open. This went on for a few minutes, which was a bit annoying as we were packed in like sardines, then suddenly the lift started going back down again.

At first it went at normal speed, then it suddenly dropped in free fall for about a second before slamming to a halt. Everyone was thrown about a bit and some people screamed. The lift was now at a diagonal angle and the doors had flown open to reveal the brickwork halfway down the lift shaft. There were alarm bells ringing and the station staff were trying to contact us on some kind of intercom but it wasn't working properly, so we had no idea what was going on. People were desperately trying to get their mobile phones to work. We were stuck like this for more than an hour - all the time standing wedged together leaning to one side. There were a couple of little kids at one end (probably going to the children's hospital nearby) and one of them had to piss on the floor in the end.

Eventually someone came to rescue us. They had to get another lift to come down to where we were trapped (about halfway down the shaft), pull up alongside, smash open a panel on the side of our lift, and then put a ladder across between the lifts for people to climb across. They put a limit of about 30 people (plus the rescuing committee) onto who could get into that lift, and evacuated the women and children etc. first. I was one of the people who had to stay behind and wait for them to come back down to get the rest of us. They said they'd be back within a minute or two, but then the second lift broke down too! About twenty minutes after that they finally came back and I scrabbled across the ladder halfway up a liftshaft into the other lift and eventually to freedom. The incident was reported in the free Metro paper the next day with virtually every detail incorrect and the amusing headline 'Passengers Lift In The Lurch'.

"could have seemed quite alarming to the passengers."

That whole thing is crazy, especially being diagonal. Could you move at all? Do you keep in touch with the other passengers? (Bonding experience I guess, maybe not.)

Okay, hold on, why are we not talking more about Rock Hardy and his adventures on saving Swayze from the sex-crazed hordes?

I was trying to figure out a way to bring the topic back to Rock Hardy and Swayze but the drama got riveted up.

Also, manual elevator controls!

NB&S: that sounds horrifying.

The video of the man stuck for 41 hours was more disturbing than I thought it would be. WTF happened?

40 people in an elevator?

David Blaine stunt gone wrong (xpost)

It was 1986 (between Red Dawn and Dirty Dancing), North and South Pt. 2 was filming in Natchez, The Swayze was enjoying his fame and the alcohol that went with it. He liked hanging out in our hotel's bar, and I imagine he got a bit of a thrill being a big enough star to have to "escape the groupies" when they started gathering.

I didn't like running the service elevator as much -- it handled like a bulldozer compared to the passenger elevators.

My gran, who probably has Alzheimer's - was stuck in it once so she doesn't want to use it anymore. :-( Which means that she hasn't left her flat in ages.

he got a bit of a thrill being a big enough star to have to "escape the groupies"

I always knew he was gay.

One of my coworkers told me a great story about being stuck in an elevator last year:

A dozen people, a small office elevator, a discrepancy w. the electrical system.

Six minutes into the incident, one of the VPs 'couldn't hold on any longer' and took a shit in the corner. Unabashed. In plain view.

Rescue came three minutes after.

oh god

I imagine him squatting in the corner, reading a newspaper

That's so sad.

Sounds like a scat/exhibition fetishist found a plausible excuse to me. I'm sadder for the other people in the elevator.

incredible

btw roxy otm, that youtube video was unsettling and becomes even more so when you read the attendant story and realize that the guy was suffering through a consistent alarm bell (and auditory hallucinations) for all 41 hours.

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa111/RADIO305/71.jpg

Holy shit. I would have lost it if I'd been in either the elevator that NB&S was in or stuck for nearly two days like that other guy. I HATE elevators and being stuck in one is a huge fear. I spent half an hour stuck in a horribly small one in an Amsterdam hostel once and that was bad enough. Glad you're ok Remy!