Over the weekend, a Sarnia woman spent two and a half hours trapped in an elevator.

A plea for help needed to be called across the river because of the strike by the International Union of Elevator Constructors.

"I did end up getting very anxious and nervous. It was very, very hot, 38 degrees with the humidex," says Nancy Bell.

Bell was on her way out to run errands around 10:30 Saturday morning when it happened.

"When I went down to the basement to the underground parking to get my car, the doors wouldn't open and the elevator was rather shaky," she recalled.

The building's manager is frustrated that help wasn't readily available when one of his residents was trapped.

"We have had issues with this one elevator and it's just been an ongoing thing for the last two months, but never this serious," says Randy Ripley, building superintendent

When Ripley couldn't find any local help. he ended up having to look across the border.

A technician was called in from Michigan and had to wait in the heavy weekend traffic to get across the Blue Water Bridge.

But the problems didn't stop there, as the technician had to be escorted to the building by Canadian Border Services.

"There are a lot of elderly people in this building and it could have been a really tragic ending, someone could have had a heart attack," says a concerned Bell.

The elevator has been put out of order and won't be fixed anytime soon.

"To me, they're compromising our residents safety by not being able to fix the issue properly," says Ripley.

The GTA is the only area where elevator techs have been forced back to work while the rest of the province waits.