Elevator safety & freight elevators

Last week a 73 year old women fell down an freight elevator shaft in a two story building in Gaffney, South Carolina.  She told someone she was going to the 2^nd floor and she opened a set of doors to access the freight elevator and she stepped in the hoist way and the elevator wasn’t there, the women died.  The link to the story is below.

http://www.wyff4.com/news/coroner-identified-volunteer-worker-killed-after-falling-down-elevator-shaft/36304554

The reason this resonated with me is recently we had a few buildings that have very old elevators.  One of the elevators we repaired the locks and they are currently working correctly the other building does not have the money to correct the safety issues with the elevator.  When I heard about this accident it hit home about why it is important to make sure we are making good decisions on our daily elevator inspections and we need to give building owners recommendations. 

Here is the predicament that older elevators have; they may be in buildings where there isn’t a lot of money to spend on the repair of the existing system and parts may not be available.   A complete freight elevator modernization is very expensive.

What do you do?  As an elevator contractor we need to give the building owner information for the repair of the system.  As a building owner they need to take these recommendations seriously and make the corrections.  If the building owner does not make the repairs to the elevator system you shut their elevator down and discontinue the service on the elevator system. 

How much is business worth?  I went to a building in 2014 and saw the elevators in the building.  The building wanted a repair on the elevator system.  After I saw the elevator system I sent a proposal to install a new elevator.  The building owner did not want to put a new elevator in.  A year later they called in an talked to another person at our company, before I knew it the person went to the building to look at the elevators and the building owner again "wanted a repair".  The building owner was calling anyone and everyone to come try and fix their elevator which needed to be replaced.  Again, we sent them a price for a new elevator system. Below you can see the elevators.

[Both elevators come down to the lowest landing, a person can easily go into the elevator pit, which is shallow, and the person would get crushed]

[This elevator machine served the building well for 80+ years but is in need of replacement]

As elevator professionals we are the people who can make the decisions on letting an elevator run or not, if it is not safe, shut it off.  Building owners, repairing the elevator system to be safe may be expensive but it is less than a serious injury or fatality at your building.  With this said, I am sending a quote out to a very old elevator that we shut off as they were running it with the gate open because a 2 speed manual horizontal gate is broken beyond simple repair. 

If you have any questions or would like information from Colley Elevator you can go to www.colleyelevator.com, email Craigz@colleyelevator.com or call 630-766-7230.