Instead of spending the weekend with family and friends, Nissim Shamayim was stuck in an elevator for 18 hours at the Shatner Center in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood.
"I could hear cars passing by on a nearby street, and I yelled to the point of exhaustion," recalled Shamayim, 42, who lives in the neighborhood. "Cold air penetrated the elevator door, so it was freezing inside. I tried to sleep, but the cold made it impossible."
Shamayim, who is in charge of renovations at one of the offices in the center, arrived at the site in the early hours of Saturday morning after remembering that he had forgotten to lock one of the doors. However, a power outage caused the elevator Shamayim was in to stop on the way up, and he could not call for help as his cell phone battery was empty. At 3 am, there was no one around to hear him yelling.
Thought about life and his children. Shamayim in elevator (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
"I activated the alarm a few times, but there was no one around to hear it," he said. "It was pitch dark in the elevator and extremely cold. I panicked."
Shamayim's attempts to break free left the doors damaged to such an extent that the elevator remained stuck even when the power returned.
Finally, after 18 hours, a worker at a nearby carpentry shop heard Shamayim's cries and alerted firefighters to the scene. Shamayim was rescued a short while later.
"When he stepped out of the elevator we could see he was very tired; he had tears in his eyes and thanked us for saving him," firefighter Hezi Shimon said.
Shamayim said that during his time in the elevator he mainly thought of his "home, children and life.
"I knew I would eventually get out, but it seemed like an eternity, a never-ending nightmare. I was hungry and suffered from dehydration," he said.