Crazy dangerous freight elevator pit

I got a call from a customer who has a building she bought from auction and wanted someone to meet a potential tenant to talk about their elevator.  Based on the location I thought I would be walking into a building with a old clunker freight elevator.  What I found was something a little bit more.

Look from the hall into the hoist way - no hatch doors

View from pit looking up - large freight car

View from standing in the pit

OH! THERE IS A STAIRWELL IN THE ELEVATOR PIT.  I have finally found how to get to the hot water heaters and electrical meters.

Nicest beater elevator machine room i've ever seen

Power is on

At least we have doors on this hoist-way entrance 

This elevator is probably from 1920, it has a tiller rope.  Some of the items I found to be wrong with this is

1.    No hatch doors at 1^st floor

2.    Elevator was turned on

3.    Stairwell from elevator pit – leads to building mechanical room

4.    Water & electrical runs through back of pit

5.    8000-10000 freight car above your head when using the stair well

6.    Pit ladder is not to code – This is a joke

7.    Much more

My visit is on the heels of a few firemen losing their lives from entering buildings that had their elevators removed or the elevators are in unsafe condition. 

The reason there is a stairwell in the elevator pit is because they didn’t want to access the mechanical room from the outside so they used the elevator pit.  So the blocked off the original access and made the new egress. 

I was shocked based on all the information above, but also from the time this person took to make the elevator pit look like this.  They also made the machine room look very nice.  Shocking outcome to this story, the previous building owner ran out of money and lost the building and it went to auction…

As elevator professional we walk into buildings like this, we have a responsibility to let the owner know what they have to do and let the AHJ know about these situations before someone gets hurt.

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.