Recall targets home elevators

LR child was among the product’s accident victims in 2017

WASHINGTON – The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted this week to approve its first-ever safety recall for a residential elevator because of the danger posed to children, a decision that comes after years of inaction by the agency and resistance from the industry, despite the injuries and deaths of small children crushed by elevators that all had the same, easy-to-fix problem.

The safety recall is narrow. It involves only about 5,000 home elevators out of the estimated hundreds of thousands that could pose a risk to small children.

And it was voluntarily agreed to by just one manufacturer, Otis Elevator Co., even though the problem is seen across the industry. Otis is offering to repair for free its Otis or CemcoLift brand elevators from certain years that pose the hazard.

But the recall notice is seen as potentially jumpstarting a stalled push by regulators to force the elevator industry to finally make home models safe for children.

“It should serve not only to avoid needless tragedies,” Robert Adler, chairman of the commission, said of this week’s recall, “but also stand as a strong precedent for the entire industry.”

The commission was first warned about the risk of home elevators in 2013, thanks to a push by the parents of Jacob Helvey, who at age 3 was seriously injured in 2010 by an elevator at his home in Atlanta. They were later joined by the Hartz family from Little Rock, whose 2½-year-old son Fletcher was killed in a home elevator accident in 2017.

Residential elevator deaths are relatively rare but uniquely harrowing.

The risk is hard to imagine. It is created by the few inches of space between a home elevator’s two doors, just enough to trap a child. At least eight children were killed and two more seriously injured in elevator entrapments since 1981, according to commission records and newspaper accounts.

A Washington Post investigation last year reported that the elevator industry had known for decades about the entrapment problem — along with a simple fix, a $100 to $200 space guard to fill the door gap. The Post also detailed how some elevator companies had spent years successfully fighting off efforts by regulators and victims’ families to force them to warn the public and remedy the problem.

The Post also revealed how elevator industry groups resisted pressure from the commission to take action and downplayed the dangers. After the article, U. S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who sits on a committee with oversight of the agency, called for an independent investigation of its handling of residential elevators.

Still, the commission decided against forcing a safety recall.

Instead, in August the commission’s then- acting chairwoman posted a brief “safety alert” about the elevator door gap on the agency’s website and sent a similar notice to governors in every state.

Safety advocates warned it was inadequate.

In recent weeks, in a move that caught many by surprise, the commission began to negotiate with Otis on the terms of a voluntary safety recall of its home elevators.

For years, Otis had distinguished itself among elevator companies by issuing warnings about the danger and fixing many of its products. The company had been spurred to take action by the 2001 death of Tucker Smith, 8, who was crushed by an Otis elevator at an inn in Bethel, Maine, during a family vacation. The Smiths, who live in Bel Air, Md., secured a promise from Otis as part of a lawsuit settlement that the company would take action. And the company did. It warned other elevator companies about the danger, retrofitted some of its elevators and pushed for new industry safety standards.