A True Elevator Story

[SS MAYFLOAT]

This past weekend a local radio host got stuck in an elevator. He told his story on the radio and this is how it went.<br /><br />I was on the 4th floor going down when all of sudden the elevator came to an abrupt stop. Couldn't tell where I was, but I know the elevator wasn't moving.<br /><br />My first thought was my cell phone. No good, too much steel and concrete, no signal. So I started pushing all the buttons with no results. I opened the cabinet labeled phone. I pressed the button and heard the beeps and then a ring, another ring and then another. Finally it was answered by the following "We're sorry, the number you dialed is no longer in service" and kept repeating.<br /><br />So now its been 10 minuets and nobody knows that I'm stuck in here. So now I push the big red button marked emergency only. All it did was ring a bell. I held the button down for 15 minuets hopeing someone will help. Nobody still hasn't made any attempt to figure out what is up. <br /><br />My next thing was to pry the doors open. I took off one of my shoes and was able to force the doors open. It was stuck between floors and I was able to make my escape out of the elevator. What a day at the County Court House I had.

 

[Twidget]

Re: A True Elevator Story

I got stuck in an elevator a few years ago during the lunch hour. I had gone down several floors and heard a loud pop, followed by the elevator lurching.<br /><br />I used the call box, the person that answered didnt really seem to want me bothering them. I answered all the questions about what happened and no, I didnt hit the stop button on the elevator.<br /><br />About half an hour later, the Fort Worth Fire Dept. showed up. They used what looked like the jaws of life to open the door. I was stuck a couple of feet higher than the mezzanine floor.<br /><br />The building was a large bank building in downtown Ft. Worth and the mezzanine was a popular restaurant, the type with ice sculptures on the piano. The people there got quit a show for their lunch.

 

[SlowlySinking]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Back in the 60's or 70's the Otis Elevator Company was located in a one story building in Chicago. <br /><br />This was reported in Playboy magazine which I read strictly for the editorial content.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: A True Elevator Story

I thought this was comical since it was in the county court house where the sheriffs department and the 911 office is. I just wonder how often the emergency services onboard the elevator is checked and upadated. <br /><br />Don't think I ever want to be in that situation ever.

 

[18rabbit]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Elevators remain the single safest mode of transportation by a very wide margin. It’s virtually impossible to get hurt in one or for it to fall.

 

[Gone]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Almost relevant, whenever I used an elevator in Hong Kong, as each person got on they would push the floor number button 8 or 9 times. Similarly when waiting, they'd push the up or down button many times as if it would make the elevator arrive faster. My traveling companions and I would always grin at each other watching the ritual that everyone went through. They must have had some poor elevators somewhere in their history to cause them to do this but no one could ever explain it.<br /><br />Never been on a stalled elevator!

 

[technostingray]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Originally posted by SlowlySinking:<br /> Back in the 60's or 70's the Otis Elevator Company was located in a one story building in Chicago. <br /><br />This was reported in Playboy magazine which I read strictly for the editorial content.

You should be on Penn and Teller.

 

[technostingray]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Originally posted by SS Mayfloat:<br /> I thought this was comical since it was in the county court house where the sheriffs department and the 911 office is. I just wonder how often the emergency services onboard the elevator is checked and upadated. <br /><br />Don't think I ever want to be in that situation ever.

What county in Ohio was this?

 

[kenimpzoom]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Originally posted by 18rabbit:<br /> Elevators remain the single safest mode of transportation by a very wide margin. It’s virtually impossible to get hurt in one or for it to fall.

Tell that to the doctor who had his head ripped off by a malfunctioning elevator. Happened last year in Houston.<br /><br />Ken

 

[Haut Medoc]

Re: A True Elevator Story

We had a death over in Bellevue a couple of months ago.....It is rare but they do happen.....JK

 

[18rabbit]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Originally posted by KenImpZoom:<br />

Originally posted by 18rabbit:<br /> Elevators remain the single safest mode of transportation by a very wide margin. It’s virtually impossible to get hurt in one or for it to fall.

Tell that to the doctor who had his head ripped off by a malfunctioning elevator. Happened last year in Houston.<br /><br />Ken

Let’s review: it’s virtually impossible to get hurt in an elevator. I’m sure that part of the doctor that remained in the elevator was undamaged.<br /><br />I remember something about most elevator injuries/deaths are the result of kids playing in the elevator shaft and/or elevator surfing, an unrecognized sport where the athlete rides on top of a descending elevator and tried to jump across to a second, ascending elevator.

 

[bandit86]

Re: A True Elevator Story

I can back rabbit up, I work for the worlds biggest elevator comany as a mechanic. Most incidents are from people screwing around. With the numer of passengers daily, it is still the safest mode of transport. the average 10 floor high rise makes about 50,000 trips a month, per elevator. think roughly 100,000 elevators in newyork alone. <br /><br />Unfortunately, mechanics are at most risks, I have a chance of something like .05% of dieing on the job or seriously getting injured tomorrow

 

[Dave Abrahamson]

Re: A True Elevator Story

Tell that to Betty Lou Oliver after the B-25 slammed into the Empire State Building in '45<br />C&P:<br /> "As the plane hit, Oliver, an elevator operator, was blown out of her post on the 80th floor and badly burned. After receiving first aid, she was put in another car to go down to an ambulance. As the elevator doors closed, rescue workers heard what sounded like a gunshot but what was, in fact, the snapping of elevator cables weakened by the crash. The car with Oliver inside, now at the 75th floor, plunged to the sub-basement, a fall of over 1,000 feet. Rescuers had to cut a hole in the car to get to the badly injured elevator operator."<br />It was slowed by the safety devices but she was still badly injured so no Rabbit, it is not quite "virtually impossible to get hurt in one or for it to fall."<br />There are always exceptions to the rules.

 

[KRS]

Re: A True Elevator Story

So... why did the person "take their shoe off" and then open the door? Was the shoe acting as kryptonite and hampering their power?

 

[bandit86]

Re: A True Elevator Story

that is one incident, and it wasnt the elevators fault the b-52 slammed into the building. <br /><br />next!

 

[txswinner]

Re: A True Elevator Story

I can not imagine the caluculations used to determine it the safest mode of travel as it only moves people very short distances. Oh well that is what statistics is all about proving the unproveable.

 

[Dave Abrahamson]

Re: A True Elevator Story

OK, if you insist.<br />C&P<br />On 21 July 2003, 76-year-old L.A. Brown was killed at the Kenner Regional Medical Center in Kenner, Lousiana, when the gurney on which he was being transported to surgery in became trapped against the roof of an elevator when the car suddenly dropped several feet just as the gurney was being pulled out of it. On 7 May 1999, 56-year-old Mary Margaret Nowosielski died in similar fashion at the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Michigan when the car her gurney was being rolled into suddenly went up, dragging her to the fourth floor and back down to the first floor between the car and the shaft wall. <br /><br />Even elevator decapitations are not new. On 6 January 1995, a runaway elevator in a Bronx office building decapitated 55-year-old James Chenault as he tried to help fellow passengers out of a malfunctioning car. The car had stopped slightly above the second floor and the doors opened. While Chenault was holding the doors open with his back and helping a woman whose foot had become trapped, the car lurched suddenly upward, beheading him. The victim's body fell to the bottom of the shaft, but the head remained in the car along with the remaining passengers as it shot up to the ninth floor. <br />According to snopes.com, "More than 30 people die in elevator-related accidents each year in the United States."<br />Also see the following: http://www.verdictsearch.com/jv3_news/feat_ctype/011205/ <br />I'm not an elevator machanic like you rabbit, so I'm sure you know a lot more than any of us but....never say never

 

[bandit86]

Re: A True Elevator Story

most of that was b.s., I could sue anyone at anytime for any reason, if I came up with a conving story. For every one of theose stories, there are thousands a day like it, people wanting free money, making up stuff. we beat hundreds of them, people claiming to get injured, yet they are seen limping into a building or othervise proved liars. and if you read them through carefully, a lot of those werent the elevators fault, it was people screwing with them like they are not supposed to