Failing to see danger of faulty stairwell handrails

THE RECENT accident at Osi’s Place tavern in Khayelitsha was a terrible tragedy for the families of the victims who died after a handrail collapsed following their panic to escape after gunshots were fired inside the tavern on the first floor.

Six young women died on the spot and another two in a vehicle accident on their way to hospital, with quite a number of others suffering injuries in falling off the stairs, now with no handrail.

But I am a little incredulous that the focus of the press has been on the under-age girls at the tavern.

Of course they shouldn’t have been there, and it demonstrates a very poor lack of control of patrons – if any control was indeed exercised at all. But the really important aspect, as far as I am concerned, is that the handrail broke, allowing a number of young women to fall off the side of the external steps to the ground, causing fatal injuries.

This result bore no relation to the age of the young women, but it had all to do with the pressure they were exerting on the handrail as they tried to escape from the tavern room on the first floor.

That the handrail’s attachments failed is the critical point of this unfortunate incident – and I have so far come across absolutely no comments on this issue.

We can only trust that the city’s building department has taken note of this incident, and that officials will be carrying out structural assessments of all public buildings with external escape stairways to determine that they are adequately reliable enough to take the greatest possible weight of people and, in particular, that the attachments of the handrails are also adequate to take the maximum sideways pressure that is likely to be applied to them by patrons trying to escape in a panic.

These inspections need to be done urgently, with recommendations on any necessary strengthening of handrail attachments.

But why has the city so far made no public statement about this safety aspect of external emergency stairs and their handrail attachments? I find it to be an aspect of great concern.