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WTF! I couldn't imagine 41 hours in there, no food,water, etc..

Don't you watch the show "Man vs Wild" with Bear Giles?

I dont think he even checked the top of the elevator or the shaft. I've been in a couple and I've always seen a ladder.

At a certain point, he decided to go for the escape hatch in the ceiling. He thought of Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” climbing up and down the shaft. He knew it was a dangerous and desperate thing to do, but he didn’t care. He had to get out of the elevator. The height of the handrail in the car made it hard for him to get a leg up. It took him a while to figure out and then execute the maneuver that would allow him to spring up to the escape hatch. Finally, he swung himself up. The hatch was locked.

A vertical-transportation axiom states that if an elevator is in trouble the safest place to be is inside the elevator. This holds even if the elevator is not in trouble. Elevator surfing—riding on top of the cab, for kicks—is dangerous. This is why the escape hatch is always locked. By law, it’s bolted shut, from the outside. It’s there so that emergency personnel can get in, not so passengers can get out.

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... 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. (Such a shaft is known as a blind hoistway.)

Many buildings in NY don't even have a 13th floor!