My wife just texted me from her phone – she was stuck in a tiny elevator in Milan.

Got stuck in a tiny elevator!!!!!!!

Followed immediately by this:

I can’t breathe!

I called the hotel to find out what was going on – they said that they were aware of the issue and a technician was on the way to fix it.  While we were waiting for her release I tried to give good safety advice; the basics “Don’t get out between floors,” “Make sure the car has stopped completely before you try to get out,” etc.

The control panel of the tiny elevator my wife was trapped in for more than 30 minutes.

Shortly thereafter, the elevator started to move and her relief was palpable:

Am feeling better that they know I am in here.

That’s when things took a turn for the worse though, as she was still stuck in the conveyance and nobody had come to talk to her yet.  I will save you from reading the messages that she sent me, but suffice it to say that she became increasingly distraught.

That’s when I started to think about how I would deal with being stuck in an elevator for a protracted time.  I mean, I’m sure I could handle an hour or two without any trouble, but at what point would your mind start playing tricks on you?

I remembered reading an excellent article in the New Yorker about the 41 hours that Nicholas White was stuck in an elevator at the McGraw-Hill building in 1999 and decided to look it up again.  It was well worth the re-read.  Highlights include gems like this:

Some 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, and because he wanted to be (as he thought, chuckling to himself) a model trapped employee. He hoped, once someone came to get him, to appear calm and collected. He did not want to be scolded for endangering himself or harming company property. Nor did he want to be caught smoking, should the doors suddenly open, so he didn’t touch his cigarettes. He still had three, plus two Rolaids, which he worried might dehydrate him, so he left them alone. As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow—electricity? friction? heat?—start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. The Business Week staff had walked down forty-three stories. He also began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.

The story continues on in fascinating fashion weaving the tale of White’s plight in with stories of the past, present and future of elevators.

In the end my wife was rescued from the elevator after another couple of phone calls from me to the hotel. Apparently they thought that they had fixed the problem because when I called the third time the fellow that answered the phone said that they had repaired the elevator and found nobody inside. I guess that they fixed the wrong elevator and just left my wife stranded in the other one.  Suffice it to say that I was not pleased.

I would encourage you to read the whole tale of Nicholas White from the New Yorker, and see below for a time lapse video from the security camera that was in White’s elevator throughout the 41 hour ordeal.