The Foursquare Blog

You can watch the video here and read the somewhat long-winded New Yorker article here.

The short version is that he went for a smoke on Friday night, and wasn't rescued until Sunday afternoon. He went through various stages in his ordeal, from patiently waiting for help, to trying to signal someone, to trying to escape, to anger and looking for someone to blame.

It was an express elevator that only served floors #39 and above. According to the article, it stopped around level #13, and when he finally did try to open the doors, all he got was a brick wall.

There was a button for an alarm, but while the alarm rang on top of the elevator car itself, obviously nobody heard it. When he tried to get out through the hatch at the top, he found that it was locked. In fact, it was locked by law, from the outside, for operators to get in, not for passengers to get out. The theory is that it is much more dangerous outside an elevator, riding on top, than inside.

When he was discovered, someone was suspiciously wondering what he was doing in that car. But after talking with the maintenance team through the intercom, he was given a series of button commands that got the car moving again, back to the lobby floor.

I would love to know those commands, and whether they work on most elevators. I guess it pays to have your cell phone with you whenever you're in an elevator. Has anyone checked their cell phone radio range while riding?

One thing thst struck me while watching the video is that... hey, there's a camera! If by chance, any security guard or elevator maintenance person looks at the monitors, what are they looking for? Isn't it a normal thing to see a person inside? Therefore, the best way to signal for help via the video system is to make things look unnatural, or to put a written sign in front of the camera, if you can find it. And to keep the sign there for as long as you are there, since you never know when someone might look at the monitor. Make sure the sign has good lighting as well.

Here are a few links to other pages I found with tips for escaping a stuck elevator.

The saddest part of Nicholas White's story is the end. Although dehydrated, he was rescued, and lived. But sadly, he became a bit of a hermit, working more on the lawsuit than returning to his job. According to the article, he lost his job, got a fairly small settlement, lost contact with his former colleagues, lost his apartment, and remained mostly unemployed when the article was written in 2008. In the end, it took much longer to escape the elevator than just 41 hours.

I was unable to find much news about Nicholas White since, but I sure hope that his life has improved by now.