Assigning responsibility for lift accidents

I WAS shocked by the report on the teenage delivery boy who was crushed to death between the lift doors in George Town last week.

Investigations carried out by the Northeast District Police chief ACP Che Zaimani Che Awang revealed that the teenager died on the spot after his head was stuck between the lift doors at the third floor of a restaurant. The police classified the case as sudden death with no sign of foul play.

I find the statement issued by the police totally unacceptable as the reasons given were probably made without referring to the Code of Practice for lift operations.

I have kept records of some of the lift fatalities over the past few years. The investigations were all closed with no further action required. So far, it seems no action has been taken to haul the responsible parties to court or to compensate the families of the victims.

I have every reason to believe that most of these lift accidents were caused mainly by poor maintenance of the equipment. Of course, there are other possibilities, like the building management’s failure to settle their service payments to lift contractors because the tenants refuse to pay the maintenance charges. In such an awkward situation, the contractors would cease to provide their maintenance services.

Lifts are deemed to be the most important equipment in every high-rise building as they provide vertical transportation for the comfort and convenience of users. The long-term functional value of a high-rise building is vitally dependent on the quality and performance of its lifts, failing which the tenants would have to use the staircase, and this would be very hard for the elderly, disabled, pregnant women and the sick.

Having worked for more than two decades in the lift industry and being involved in lift designs and maintenance of the equipment in many developed countries, I think that lift accidents, no matter how trivial, are serious problems in the community.

Lift accidents not only generate grave concern among the building’s tenants but also instil fear and anxiety in the people’s mind. But regrettably, to date the police and other relevant authorities have yet to disclose what punitive action has been taken on the parties concerned to prevent lift accidents from happening again.

For general information, rules in the safety Code of Practice clearly specify that all passenger lifts must be installed with a system that would automatically generate a siren with a flashing indicator to warn passengers when lifts are overloaded. In this situation, the lift would remain stationary and the door would stay open to enable the passengers to get out.

The Code of Practice also makes it compulsory for all the lift doors to be installed with an automatic and sensitive safety device. In this regard, a person’s body or any obstruction placed between or hits the sensor strips would automatically activate the safety device, causing the lift door to reopen immediately.

An emergency battery-operated power supply (EBOPS) unit must also be installed in the lift systems. This would enable the lift to travel safely to the nearest landing floor and open its doors to release its passengers during power interruptions.

EBOPS units are usually fitted as a supplementary power supply in all low-cost apartments or flats where emergency power generators are not installed.

The rescue of people trapped in lifts when the doors fail to open at designated floors should be carried out carefully by well-trained lift technicians or firemen.