Category Archives: By Device Type

Phoenix, AZ – Woman injured after hotel elevator fell three stories

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According to ABC15.com and CBS 5 Arizona, a Phoenix woman broke her right ankle, and possibly her left ankle as well, when the elevator she entered dropped three floors at a high speed. The fire department report noted that the victim entered the elevator on the third floor, and as soon as she activated the second floor cab call, she heard a loud noise and then the elevator dropped. The cause of the incident remained unknown. Read the full story by ABC15.com, published December 4, 2011, and the full story by CBS 5 Arizona, published December 4, 2011, and a follow-up posted December 5, 2011. Also check out the video below by ABC15.com, posted on YouTube December 4, 2011.

Based on media reports and the accounts of eyewitnesses and emergency officials, it would seem that the elevator likely experienced a hydraulic system failure. The loud noise heard before the incident may have been a catastrophic failure of a hydraulic piping, fitting, or valve. With a loss of hydraulic containment, the elevator fell as the hydraulic plunger lost supporting pressure.

According to records obtained by ElevatorAccident.net from the City of Phoenix, the incident elevator was a three-story Otis hydraulic elevator with a 2500 lb., 16 passenger capacity and a rated speed of 115 feet per minute. The applicable code year was either 1978 or 1984, although it could not conclusively be determined from the records alone. In either case, a hydraulic elevator of this vintage would not have been required to have a plunger gripper. According to the ASME A17.1a-2002, Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators, a plunger gripper is “a mechanical device attached to a supporting structure in the pit, which stops and holds the car by gripping the plunger.” The basic function of a plunger gripper is to prevent these type of falling cab incidents in hydraulic elevators. Had a plunger gripper been required on this elevator, the victim in this case likely would not have been injured.

Brooklyn, NY – Woman dragged 8 floors, leg mangled by hospital elevator

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According to the New York Daily News, an elevator accident occurred at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, on Christmas Day, causing one woman’s leg to be horribly mangled. Firefighters that responded to the incident reported that the woman’s leg was trapped in the narrow gap between the elevator cab and the door sill. Firefighters cut power to the elevator and used clamps to secure the elevator car, before determining that a gas-powered cutting saw was needed to cut through the steel frame of the cab and the concrete eighth floor door sill. The woman was apparently visiting a sick relative at the hospital with her daughter, who witnessed the harrowing event. Read the full story by the Daily News, published December 25, 2010.

A comprehensive investigation into the circumstances leading to this incident determined that a mechanic for contractor Al-An Elevator, Jason Jordan (no relation), had used a wire jumper to bypass the elevator’s door interlock and gate switch circuits. The King’s County District Attorney’s office secured a felony assault indictment against the mechanic because he allegedly “fled the hospital without saying a word or offering help” after discovering that his actions had led to the victim’s injuries. Read the full story by the New York Times, published December 15, 2011.

At least a portion of the injury event was caught on surveillance video and was released to the media. The video, courtesy of ElevatorExpert.net and published by the New York Daily News, which does not include narration, first depicts a high-definition re-creation of the elevator’s movement with the doors open. Next is actual surveillance video of the injury to Ms. Jordan, which frighteningly depicts her casually stepping on to the elevator when it shoots up unexpectedly with the doors still open as her daughter looks on in horror, gazing into the dark, open hoistway where her mother was just standing a moment prior. Bystanders and hospital employees, even on different floors, all apparently heard Ms. Jordan’s screams as she was dragged up the hoistway, and rushed to her aid. However, the video then depicts the accused elevator mechanic walking down the stairs from the elevator motor room, gazing on the woman, still trapped at the 8th floor landing, then leaving the hospital post-haste, moments before dozens of firefighters arrived on the scene. The end of the video depicts some still photos of the aftermath of the rescue, depicting the gruesome amount of force required to extricate Ms. Jordan from the narrow space between the elevator cab and the door sill, which normally measures less than one inch in width. The final moments of the video depict a forensic re-creation of the injury event as it moves up at high speed with its doors will open.

This case was also the the subject of an episode of a CBS six-part mini-series titled “Brooklyn DA” which aired on June 29, 2013. The show depicts Kings County ADA Lawrence Oh as he works to investigate the accident and prosecute the mechanic.

Bronx, NY – Man moving mattress falls down freight elevator shaft

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According to ABC 7 Eyewitness News New York, Joseph Ryan, a 35 year-old man died around 11 p.m. Monday after plunging two stories down a freight elevator shaft in an apartment building located on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The man was moving into a new apartment and was apparently walking backwards and carrying a mattress at the lobby level when the incident occurred. The man fell down to the basement level and suffered injuries that he succumbed to after being transported to nearby St. Barnabas Hospital. Early accounts of the accident described that the door was open but the elevator was not at the floor at the time the incident occurred. Tenants in the building noted that the freight elevator was shut down every night and that only building maintenance workers and security guards had access to the elevator.

Interestingly, the article noted that although the victim was not working at the time, he worked for a private elevator contractor during the day. The New York City Department of Buildings investigated the accident and determined that the victim had apparently used a drop key to open the hoistway door and gain access to the elevator for at least one prior trip on the elevator. The Department of Buildings also issued a violation for an apparently malfunctioning mechanical door interlock on the incident elevator. The Eyewitness News report also noted that the Department of Buildings had received a number of tenant complaints about the elevators prior to the incident including one that noted “no one uses [the elevator because] they are afraid.”

Read the full story by ABC 7 New York, published March 2, 2010, or watch the videos below.

Edinburgh, Scotland – 65 year old grandmother injured after escalator suddenly stops

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According to the Daily Record, “Violet Roberts suffered two broken wrists, a gash to her right leg and a spinal fracture” after “a woman apparently pressed the stop button on the moving stairs on December 10, 2009.”

Interestingly, the woman that was accused of pressing the emergency stop button was charged but acquitted after Ms. Roberts failed to identify the alleged perpetrator, despite the fact that the entire incident was apparently caught on CCTV camera, and despite that the alleged perpetrator’s own mother identified her daughter in the video. According to the article, Ms. Roberts “still suffers pain and discomfort every day as a result of the incident at the city’s Waverley Station three years ago.”

Read the full story by Jack Mathieson, published December 4, 2012. The Daily Record published a second story on December 5, 2012, which basically contained the same facts as the first.

Shiodome, Tokyo, Japan – 45 year-old man suffers fatal fall after leaning against escalator handrail

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Satoshi Katayama was killed in April 2009 after he leaned backwards against an escalator handrail which then lifted him off his feet and over the the handrail, dropping him to his death into an open atrium nearly 30 feet high. Surveillance video of the incident depicts the victim briefly leaning against the handrail before being carried over the balustrade and falling to his death. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Japan’s Consumer Safety Investigation Commission is reviewing the accident as of June 27, 2013, in light of the recently published results of an investigation by the Japanese Ministry of Land. The Land Ministry investigation concluded that safety barriers could have prevented the accident, but noted that the Japanese Building Standards Law did not require their installation.

Sources reporting this story include: