[VIDEO] Man trapped in elevator for 41 hours

CharlieMurphy · Apr 21, 2008

This happened back in 1999, but the footage was just recently released. No water or track of time.

Madness: Trapped in Elevator Car 30

In a New Yorker Magazine article by Nick Paumgarten that described a number of stories about elevator horrors and dangers, he recounted the harrowing experience of Nicholas White, a special assignment employee who worked in the mid-town Manhattan offices of Business Week magazine.

Nicholas White was a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week. He was working late on a special assignment and wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague that he’d be right back and, leaving his jacket behind, headed downstairs. Thus commenced the longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life, a harrowing experience that began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999.

The Business Week offices were located on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building in mid-town Manhattan. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment, White felt a jolt. The lights went out, immediately flashed on again and then the elevator stopped.

The control panel made a beep, and White waited a moment, expecting a voice to give information or instructions, but none came. He pressed the intercom button, but there was no response. He hit it again, and then began pacing around the elevator. Time passed, although he was not sure how much, because he had no watch or cell phone. He occupied himself with thoughts of remaining calm and decided that he’d better not do anything drastic, because, whatever the malfunction, he thought it unwise to jostle the car. As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. He began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.

The most striking thing about the security-camera videotape of White’s time in the McGraw-Hill elevator is that it includes split-screen footage from three other elevators, on which you can see men intermittently performing maintenance work. Apparently, they never wondered about the one he was in. Eight security guards came and went while he was stranded there, and nobody seems to have noticed him on the monitor.

After a while, White imagined building staff members opening the elevator’s doors ten days later and finding him dead on his back, like a cockroach. Within hours, he had smoked all his remaining cigarettes. At a certain point, he decided to open the doors. He pried them apart and held them open with his foot. He was presented with a cinder-block wall on which, perfectly centered, were scrawled three “13″s-one in chalk, one in red paint, one in black. It was a dispiriting sight. He concluded that he must be on the thirteenth floor, and that, this being an express elevator, there was no egress from the shaft anywhere for many stories up or down. He peered down through the crack between the wall and the sill of the elevator and saw that it was very dark. He could make out some light at the bottom. It looked far away. A breeze blew up the shaft.

He started to call out. “Hello?” He tried cupping his hand to his mouth and yelled out some more. “Help! Is there anybody there? I’m stuck in an elevator!” He kept at it for a while. White opened the doors to urinate. As he did so, he hoped, in vain, that a trace of this violation might get the attention of someone in the lobby. He considered lighting matches and dropping them down the shaft to attract notice, but still had the presence of mind to suspect that this might not be wise. The alarm bell kept ringing. He paced and waved at the overhead camera. He couldn’t tell whether it was night or day.

Eventually, he lay down on the floor and tried to sleep. The carpet was like coarse AstroTurf, and was lousy with nail trimmings and other detritus. It was amazing to him how much people could shed in such a short trip. He used his shoes for a pillow and laid his wallet, unfolded, over his eyes to keep out the light. It wasn’t hot, yet he was sweating. His wallet was damp. Maybe a day had passed. He drifted in and out of sleep, awakening each time to the grim recognition that his elevator confinement had not been a dream. His thirst was overpowering. The alarm was playing more aural tricks on him, so he decided to turn it off. Then he tried doing some Morse code with it. He yelled some more. He tried to pick away at the cinder-block wall.

At a certain point, Nicholas White ran out of ideas. Anger and vindictiveness took root. He began to think, They, whoever they were, shouldn’t be able to get away with this, that he deserved some compensation for the ordeal. He cast about for blame. He wondered where his colleague was, why she hadn’t been alarmed enough by his failure to return, jacketless, from smoking a cigarette to call security. “Whose fault is this?” he wondered. “Who’s going to pay?” He decided that there was no way he was going to work the following week.

And then he gave up. The time passed in a kind of degraded fever dream. On the videotape, he lies motionless for hours at a time, face down on the floor. A voice woke him up: “Is there someone in there?” “Yes.” “What are you doing in there?” White tried to explain; the voice in the intercom seemed to assume that he was an intruder. “Get me the **** out of here!” White shrieked. Duly persuaded, the guard asked him if he wanted anything. White, who had been planning to join a few friends at a bar on Friday evening, asked for a beer.

Before long, an elevator-maintenance team arrived and, over the intercom, coached him through a set of maneuvers with the buttons. White asked what day it was, and, when they told him it was Sunday at 4 P.M., he was shocked. He had been trapped for forty-one hours. He felt a change in the breeze, which suggested that the elevator was moving. When he felt it slow again, he wrenched the door open, and there was the lobby. In his memory, he had to climb up onto the landing, but the video does not corroborate this. When he emerged from the elevator, he saw his friends, with a couple of security guards, and a maintenance man, waiting, with an empty chair. His friends turned to see him and were appalled at the sight; he looked like a ghost, one of them said later. White told a guard, “Somebody could’ve died in there.” “I know,” the guard said.

White had to go upstairs to get his jacket. He went home, and then headed to a bar. He woke up to a reel of phone messages and a horde of reporters colonizing his stoop. He barely left his apartment in the ensuing days, deputizing his friends to talk to reporters through a crack in the door. White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention, which he shunned but thrilled to, prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment.

He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to his 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, dragged on for four years. Eventually, 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 did learn why the elevator stopped. There was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer has his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and he’s lost all contact with his former colleagues. Now, he’s also lost his apartment, spent all of his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. White is currently unemployed.
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article link

ABC Interview:
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Footage:
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WhoMikeJames · Apr 21, 2008

You would think with all that free time he'd at least do it once...

Surfguy · Apr 21, 2008

That's pretty horrible but I would say he handled the aftermath rather poorly. It's like he took a permanent vacation after that. Now, he can't even find a job. He sounds like a screw-up.

Lil Pun · Apr 21, 2008

WhoMikeJames said:

You would think with all that free time he'd at least do it once...
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If you're talking about using the restroom he did. I watched the interview with Diane Sawyer and he said he opened the doors and let it go down the shaft.

DonnyMost · Apr 21, 2008

Man, that would be terrible.

halfbreed · Apr 21, 2008

Lil Pun said:

If you're talking about using the restroom he did. I watched the interview with Diane Sawyer and he said he opened the doors and let it go down the shaft.
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I don't think that's what he meant

Lil Pun · Apr 21, 2008

halfbreed said:

I don't think that's what he meant
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OK, well that's all they talked about in terms of doing anything.

AntiSonic · Apr 21, 2008

The worst part - it was the freaking weekend.

Mr. Brightside · Apr 22, 2008

At least he wasn't trapped in the closet like R. Kelly.

meh · Apr 22, 2008

That building mangement needs to be fired. I could understand if its an old building, just happened to be weekend, and there's no one around. But the guy's ordeal was on the freaking security camera! How did this happen?

And the fact that the guy quit his job on the possibility of a big paycheck was just stupid. This is what happens when all people hear are big settlements in lawsuits. They screw up their lives.

shipwreck · Apr 22, 2008

Article said:

And then he gave up. The time passed in a kind of degraded fever dream. On the videotape, he lies motionless for hours at a time, face down on the floor. A voice woke him up: “Is there someone in there?” “Yes.” “What are you doing in there?” White tried to explain; the voice in the intercom seemed to assume that he was an intruder. “Get me the **** out of here!” White shrieked. Duly persuaded, the guard asked him if he wanted anything. White, who had been planning to join a few friends at a bar on Friday evening, asked for a beer.
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That's hilarious. Either this guy was so delusional he didn't even know what he was saying, or he is a man with an extreme dedication to humor, in lieu of health, who seized the moment.

H-townhero · Apr 22, 2008

wow that is just nuts, I'd probably go insane

Jeremiah · Apr 22, 2008

So...big payday for this guy.

But he wasn't very resourceful. I would have torn that handle off and tried to knock those cinder blocks out.

The three 13s are pretty creepy.

The Real Shady · Apr 22, 2008

WhoMikeJames said:

You would think with all that free time he'd at least do it once...
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There is 20 hours deleted from footage for a reason. Excessive masturbating.

joshbo90 · Apr 22, 2008

that is freaking crucial

Uprising · Apr 22, 2008

Is it wrong that I laughed my ass off when watching that video?

rockets > * · Apr 22, 2008

i'm surprised he didnt smoke a cigarette. i would have smoked my entire pack in hopes of setting off a fire alarm or someone smelling smoke from an elevator or to just relieve stress and pass time.

H-townhero · Apr 22, 2008

rockets > * said:

i'm surprised he didnt smoke a cigarette. i would have smoked my entire pack in hopes of setting off a fire alarm or someone smelling smoke from an elevator or to just relieve stress and pass time.
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lol very good point.

Rox_fan_here · Apr 22, 2008

rockets > * said:

i'm surprised he didnt smoke a cigarette. i would have smoked my entire pack in hopes of setting off a fire alarm or someone smelling smoke from an elevator or to just relieve stress and pass time.
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Within hours, he had smoked all his remaining cigarettes.
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He did.

krnxsnoopy · Apr 22, 2008

rockets > * said:

i'm surprised he didnt smoke a cigarette. i would have smoked my entire pack in hopes of setting off a fire alarm or someone smelling smoke from an elevator or to just relieve stress and pass time.
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I read in an article it said he did smoke cigarettes, and he ran out of them. I'm pretty sure if you're a smoker and you're bored trapped inside an elevator, you're going to smoke cigarettes. lol

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