Winds were howling, children were crying, one man was shouting and another stood paralyzed with fear, as a stalled elevator swayed 300 metres up the CN Tower.

"After about 2 1/2 hours, we started to go up a few metres," passenger Irene Klee, visiting from Costa Rica, recounted yesterday of their ordeal Sunday aboard the glass-walled elevator. "Something was scratching the side – it sounded like steel against rock ...

"We were all screaming. One of the small kids said he wanted to throw up. Then we dropped about five metres down."

High winds trapped 17 people and buffeted them for at least four hours, an event tower chief operating manager Jack Robinson called unprecedented. Elevators sometimes stick but usually not for more than a few minutes, he said.

"We're not invincible here," he said. "Our elevators are the highest tech, the highest quality, geared for extraordinary winds. (But) the (elevator) shaft is hollow, so from time to time winds can get in there and make things go wonky."

Klee arrived in Canada Saturday with her children, Patricio, 15, and Daniella, 13. Winds were blowing at about 100 kilometres an hour when they visited the CN Tower Sunday.

"They told us we would take it slowly," Klee said of the elevator ride. "They said usually it takes 90 seconds. For us, it was going to take 2 1/2 minutes." With about 10 metres to go, the elevator stopped.

"The (elevator) operator grabbed the phone and said, `Don't worry – we will fix this immediately,'" Klee recalled. Sixteen passengers, including four children, plus the operator were suspended high overlooking Lake Ontario – "facing empty space," Klee said.

Two Otis Elevator technicians quickly arrived to find one of the elevator's 16 cables out of alignment, tangled by the wind, Robinson said.

They sent for a third worker and extra equipment.

From a management point of view, all went well. Staff were in constant contact with the elevator. All arrived at the top safely.

From a passenger point of view, the experience was terrifying, Klee said. But she and her teenagers enjoyed a free meal at the tower restaurant, got their entrance fee reimbursed and rode the elevator back down.