Seen At 11

Tourists Trapped In Empire State Building Elevator

Visitor From Germany: 'No One Say Sorry To Us'

NEW YORK (CBS) ― It was quite a chaotic scene in Midtown Friday night after some construction work gone awry left several tourists trapped in an elevator high up in the Empire State Building.

Home video shot at the scene showed one of the victims on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. Witnesses say the woman was hurt possibly while trying to prey open the doors of the elevator.

CBS 2 HD spoke to one couple that was trapped.

Hundreds of people were inconvenienced because construction workers accidentally cut power to the elevators.

The couple from Germany came for a bird's-eye view of New York City, but what they got instead was an hour-long tour of the inside of a motionless elevator.

"It stopped and we were waiting. Then it got dark," Michael Siegers said.

The tight stuffy space inside the elevator felt, the couple said, like the four walls were closing in. There was a phone inside the elevator but it didn't work. Instead of photographing city panoramas, the couple took shots of the close quarters they called home during their ordeal.

They were crammed in with 12 other scared and frustrated people, some of them crying.

"I had some chocolate and I give all to people, but it's not so good," Jutta Siegers said. "When we came down nobody there say sorry to us."

They ate the chocolates and waited between floors in the 80s. When the power came back on they moved but only to somewhere near the 75th floor, where they got out. Another elevator then took them the rest of the way down.

They were told by building officials they can return Saturday and see all the sights they missed, but the Siegers didn't seem too excited about that idea.

"I say we do it," Michael Siegers said.

But Jutta Siegers said she wasn't so sure.

The power was eventually restored throughout the building and the tours started up again until 1 a.m.

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