A lot of people were screaming

I thought elevators were safe

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...108&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

Place I used to work at had an elevator.

2 women were working on the weekend, got on the elevator, pressed "down".

whoops!

A roof leak had filled the bottom of the shaft and messed up the controls also. They went all the way to the basement where the elevator filled 1/2 to 2/3 with water.

They then had to wait for someone to find them.

They were _not_ happy little campers.

FYI, it was a hydraulic elevator. It had some sort of pit in the basement. It was this pit into which they descended.

I never have, nor ever will trust elevators. I use the stairs.

If one were to be on an elevator and this happened, I wonder if there is any specific action or position to take to lessen injury?

Thanks al ot. I am the security director at the tallest building in Kansas, and I ride the elevators daily. Now it will be months before I can ride without being paranoid. Ours are suppose to be counter weighted so that they would actually ascend in the event of a failure. Still they cover 1 floor a second. That is pretty darn fast. I hope these people will all be okay.

I have often thought about how everyday we climed into one of these things without a second thought. We trust our lives to mechanics, and the other people who service them without so much as a passing thought.

I bet, come Monday, a lot more people here will be taking the stairs for a while.

Bravo25 said:

Thanks al ot. I am the security director at the tallest building in Kansas, and I ride the elevators daily.

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Hey there Bravo25, I am actually in the electronic surveillance/security industry as well and have been working with a very interesting company that provides Computer-Aided-Dispatch compatible software to work with a cellular link in the elevators that can locate anyone stuck in the lifts. I am sure you folks have excellent protection currently, but I found this to be a very promising technology to help situations such as this.

Sigman said:

If one were to be on an elevator and this happened, I wonder if there is any specific action or position to take to lessen injury?

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Lying flat on the floor of the elevator will help to distribute the force over the entire body.

Uhh.. so you break every bone instead of just a few? It does occur to me that might actually happen..

I was thinking about such a scenario too and wondering what I could do. Normally, if standing straight up, the force would pass straight through the legs, upwards, into the pelvis and the rest of the body, so I thought, why not squat down? Then I realized you'd probably break your pelvis anyway if you did that, with your rear hitting the floor just as hard. I could be wrong though.

I was listening to radio one day, when they ran a listener call-in contest to answer a question. The question asked which mode of transportation had the best statistical "safe-riding" record for the most miles traveled without fatality or injury. The next day I again listened, and found that no-one had guessed the answer. The answer was elevators. They have traveled the most miles with the least fatalities and injuries.

I've no idea where they got their data, but I found it an interesting statistic.

Monolith said:

Lying flat on the floor of the elevator will help to distribute the force over the entire body.

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Having broken legs is better than having your brain mashed into the back half of your skull which would kill you.

A VERY old TV show called "Man and the Challenge" had an episode where the hero was caught in a falling elevator. He jumped up and grabbed the light fixture to "isolate him from the shock" of the landing, thereby saving his life. I don't think that would have worked either, as you would have just hit the floor a few milliseconds later with the same effect except all your fingers would be broken too. I think Myth Busters did an episode on this which came to the conclusion there pretty much wasn't jack you could do - your impact energy was your impact energy and it had to go somewhere and broken legs weren't the worst thing.

From The WORST-CASE SCENARIO Survival Handbook: TRAVEL

How to survive in a plummeting elevator
1) Flatten your body against the car floor.
While there is disagreement among the experts, most recommend this method. This should distribute the force of the impact, rather than concentrate it on one area of your body. (Standing may be difficult anyway.) Lie in the center of the car.

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An illustration depicts a person laying chest-down on the elevator floor, covering her head with both hands. My own thoughts... wouldn't she break her nose?

The handbook also notes that a hydraulic elevator is most likely to fail, and the height is limited to about 70 feet, so a fall is unlikely to be fatal.

These accidents are very rare, I am a NYC elevator constructor, and the safety devices on Traction (cable) are very good. For example on a traction elevator there are usually 5 cables, each one is designed to hold the whole weight of the cab, counterweights and total load. So even in the event that 4 cables broke(extremely unlikely) you would be still held by the fifth cable.

Also on traction elevators there is an overspeed governor which can be tripped both electrically and mechanically should the elevator start to travel at 125% of its rated speed. At which point the brakes would be applied, stopping the elevator very quickly.

As for hydraulic elevators they are just now being fitted with arresting collars that would stop the elevator should something catastophic happen like the oil line breaking. But even without the collar the line would have to break in half to allow a lot of oil out and even then it would not come down at a great rate of speed.

As for a an elevator filling with water in the pit, that is possible I have seen pits filled with water, but it couldn't possibly fill half to two-thirds of the way up unless the the basement or lowest landing was completely under water. Hydraulic elevator pits have pit structures called buffer stands that would not allow the the cab to go more than a foot into the pit, also the actual jacks(the part that raises and lowers the cab) are set so that the elevator cannot travel very far into the pit.

I hope this clears up some of the misconceptions about elevators. Thay are very safe and getting safer. The people who work on them are well trained, I had to do a five year apprenticeship and pass a very hard mechanics exam to get my journeymans card.

If you have any other questions post them here and I would be happy to answer them, as for lying down in an elevator, I am not sure about that. First I am not sure I would think of it and second if the elevator is going that fast and that far towards the basement something really bad, like 9-11-01, is happening and there might not be any hope any way.

Local#1 Elevator Constructor,Rugbymatt

And traveling by stairs is no doubt one of the most dangerous modes of travel, especially if you are wearing roller skates. I don't know the fatalities per million passenger miles though.

But if your only form of exercise is climbing stairs, maybe it's better to walk up and ride down.

And if you're claustrophobic an escalator may be the best choice.

Personally I just stay on the ground floor.

Jeepers are you folks paranoid!

There must be 10,000,000 car accidents for every elevator accident!

turbodog,

I think your story is more freaky than a fall; those ladies probably had no idea how much water would seep into that elevator before it stopped. I can't imagine the panic, and then having to stand in it all weekend! I hope they got some compensation for that.

Somewhat OT

I think that escalator mishaps are quite common when compared to elevarors, particularly in areas with more than average seismic activity. Many years ago I worked at the old NC Company department store in Anchorage. They have tremors every month (or week) at least and the escalator repair guys were out there re-tuning them after each one.

I saw lots of kids get their shoes stuck in them badly enough that someone had to manually stop the unit so they could free the shoe. Once I happened to be looking at a DOWN escalator with about twelve people riding on it when with no warning the steps reversed directions and started going UP. They ALL tumbled down the escalator. It was spectacular. Two of us who saw it all ran to the manual override controls to see who had done it -- but there was no one anywhere near the controls. It did it all by itself.

I'm not afraid of them but to this day I make certain that I always have at least one hand with a grip on the handrail when I ride one.

Hmmmm. Lying down SOUNDS logical. If you are standing, you have 110 to 250 pounds supported by your feet. When you hit, the feet have the full inertia of your body, while your neck is supporting only 10 pounds or so. All of them seem to have had leg injuries.

If you are laying down, you have less than 10 pounds of body above any single point. I can see where you might still have the G forces but less inertia to worry about.

Like a previous poster said... I'd not think of that in the 5 seconds or so that the elevator drops.

Daniel

I wonder if you KNEW how to do a Parachute Landing Fall (aka a PLF) if that would be the best way - in a classic PLF, you take the impact one point at a tme, while falling, so that NO point gets the full shock, and you don't get it all at once

BTW your "hind quarters" are the 4th part that hits - which leads to the airborne slang of "head up the 4 point of contact"

It is reasons like that, why is given a chance, I'd much prefer to take stairs.