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Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?

 

In my 39 yrs of life I have NEVER been stuck in an elevator - seen a few out of service lifts, but never had one stop with me in it.

 

But this afternoon child #2 rang me from inside an elevator to let me know he would be late home because the technician coming to free them from a bustest elevator was another half an hour away... wwwhhhhaaattt>???

 

There were 5 teenagers - 2 boys and 3 girls stuck in a very small elevator about 15 minutes walk from my home. They were stuck in there for an hour in total. Apparently the other boy had a little panic and started hitting stuff, but my cub stayed calm and pressed the emergency button and talked to someone about getting them out.

 

My eyes just rolled - it is hard enough getting 14 yr olds to keep it clean when they are in public with wide open spaces, and here they were in close proximity closed off from the world for an hour!!

 

Anyone else have a close encounter with a faulty elevator?

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My mates got stuck in an elevator for about 4 hours after a party. By the time they raised the alarm and someone got the fire brigade out to open the elevator they were drunk again after drinking the bottle of Whisky that they had in there with them. lol.gif

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Someone in my office got stuck in an elevator in Tokyo when they had that earthquake in Niigata. There were in there for best part of an hour, fairly high up as well so I hear and were a bit shaken up by it (no pun intended).

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I got stuck in a lift for an hour and half on the night before my finals were about to begin at university! There were about 8 of us in the lift and all of us had been in the library all day, we were pretty much the last people to leave the floor and the libraray was pretty much closed, so it took ages for anyone to come and get us. We just sat there squashed up hoping that we would get a few days extra grace or an instant 2:1 with our final exams because of "the trauma" of it!!!! We didn`t!

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I take several elevators each day. Getting in and out of work/home/entertainment venue requires elevator rides. Longest I've ever been stuck in one 'cos they stopped is about 5 mins. Almost all lifts here are monitored by the management.

 

God help those who need the toilet and are stuck. Gid help those who are trapped with them.

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I was in an elevator in a military hospital a few years back with a US Army Ranger Captain and a civilian. The elevator stopped midway between the uppermost two floors, then began to freefall! The Capt. shouted, "bend yer knees!" just before the elevator stopped short of hitting the ground floor. The civilian used the panic phone to call for help, but the elevator kept going up and falling back down until someone managed to shut off the power.

 

It was like an amusement park ride without the price of admission! ...oh and none of the fun.

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One slip was scary enough - after about the third or fourth up-down cycle with no end in sight is when things began to look really dire! \:\)

 

From what I found out later, this elevator dated back to around WWII, and the analog controller (which was basically a bunch of relays that looked like an old telephone switchboard) was going bad. We had pressed the button for the 6th floor, and the elevator really wanted to get us there. When one of the failing relays partially dropped power to the motor, the elevator car fell, but since there was partial power and none of the cables were broken, the emergency brake system didn't immediately activate to stop the fall. Some back-up system stopped the fall. Since the car hadn't reached the 6th floor, the elevator still wanted to get us there, so it restarted the motor and tried again. Up, down, up, down... Fail, retry...

 

Through all of this, the Ranger Captain never ever looked the slightest bit concerned.

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