This massive crane crashes during the construction of a new stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in US on July 14th 1999. The heavy lifting crane is attempting to move a huge piece of steel over the stadium when the wind causes the crane to collapse under the gigantic weight.
This incident claimed the lives of 3 construction workers as well as causing massive amounts of damage to the building.
It highlights the dangers facing construction workers each day.
How about this for a nasty accident, a crane is dragged over the edge of a bridge while attempting to drag a bus from a river. Even though the bus is almost out of the water, the crane cannot handle the massive weight of the flooded vehicle and is slowly dragged over the end of the bridge into the river below.
The crane operator escaped with his life which can only be described as a minor miracle.
Lifting accidents are a lot more common that you may think especially in the poorer countries of the world who cannot always afford the correct equipment for dangerous rescue attempts like this.
Residents in sheltered accommodation in Leicestershire have said that they have been left “miserable and lonely” by a malfunctioning lift. The vulnerable people in St. Mary’s Court at Donnington le Heath have been blighted by the lift which has not been working for around 2 months.
The flats are divided over different levels and are connected by the malfunctioning lift. This has meant that, whilst it has been out of action, many residents have been unable to leave their first floor bedrooms for simple chores such as getting themselves something to eat. The Council has apologised for the situation but have said they cannot speed up the process of fixing the lift as they are waiting on a part coming over from Italy. The Council has said that it will now be focussing its attention on how to avoid such problems in the future. The notion of putting in a stair lift is being considered. Such a step would likely be welcomed by residents as it would mean that, if the lift were to break again in the future then they would still be able to move about their accommodation as they wished. However, obviously a stair lift would not be as desirable as a fully-working lift as only one resident at a time would be able to descend or ascend the stairs and this could lead to backlogs of pensioners during the busiest times.
Residents and their families will likely be wanting to know why the process of fixing the lift has taken so long. Sheltered accommodation is often seen as a viable alternative to pensioners staying in their own homes as it is generally considered that they will be much safer and less vulnerable. This situation has brought into question whether or not this is actually the case. “Can you imagine getting up and just sitting here with no one to talk to all day long? It’s awful.” commented one elderly resident. At a time of their lives when they should be able to relax and feel secure, these elderly people have been placed under an unfair amount of stress and upset. Hopefully the repairs will be made as soon as the elusive part appears from Italy and then the pensioners will be once more mobile and will be able to enjoy the retirement in a manner which is befitting.
A beauty spot in the stunning Australian state of Victoria became the scene of a massive rescue mission as 18 people were injured and 65 trapped when a chairlift collapsed. Scarily, the pylon tower which supports the ski-lift broke which caused the cables to come down. This caused about 12 cars to crash 10 metres to the ground; many passengers suffering strained necks or spinal injuries as a result of the plunge.
No injuries were life threatening and indeed it transpires that the situation could have been much, much worse if the emergency breaking equipment for the ski-lift had not kicked in. If the cars which were not involved in the initial fall had kept moving then the result could well have been tragic but, luckily, the worst case scenario did not occur. Three of the more severely injured passengers had to be airlifted away from the scene of the disaster, one said to be in a stable condition whilst another two were deemed to be in a serious but stable condition.
The rescue operation, which was launched as soon as emergency services learned of what had happened, was hampered by the uneven and difficult terrain which the lift crosses over. Some people were trapped for up to six hours as the rescuers had to employ the use of ropes and hydraulic lifts to attempt to pull people back up and take them away for treatment. The chairlift crosses 950 metres of such difficult terrain and rises to a staggering height of 740 feet. Had the collapse happened when passengers were at the peak of this height then things could been a lot worse.
The focus now that everyone has been treated is to attempt to get to the bottom of what actually caused the accident and how it can be prevented from happening again in the future. Investigators from Worksafe Victoria are on the scene in an attempt to find answers to people’s questions. The problem, because the emergency brake system work but the tower itself broke, is likely to be discovered to be structural rather than technological and thus this is likely to be the focus of any rebuilding and reworking of the lift. At this point it is unknown whether or not the chairlift will reopen in the future and thus tourists will have to find another way of getting to the top of the 300m high Arthur’s Seat.
We’re such a television-obsessed culture now that, if we can’t find the remote we go from placid to violent in around five seconds. So spare a thought for Russia who, after a three-day black out, is only just beginning to receive transmissions once again. A fire at the Ostaniko tower was the source of the trouble and three days later the two main Russian channels began to do a limited joint transmission service which included soap operas and news programmes. T.V addicts may have longer to wait before many of their favourite shows are back on the airwaves, perhaps as long as a month and a half.
A much greater tragedy was unveiled as televisions across Russia staggered back into life; the deaths which were the result of the transmission tower fire. Three people, lift operator Svetlana Loseva, Aleksandr Shepitsyn, a plumber and Vladimir Arsyukov, had been attempting to flee the burning tower in the lift when the carriage plunged and killed them. However, this is not the full horror of what actually went on. Russian T.V gave a surprisingly stark description of what happened. Before the car of the lift actually plunged down, it became suspended some 250 metres above the ground. Here, because of the fire, it became red hot and, in the pitch blackness, began to fill with smoke. The harrowing last words of one of the victims are said to have been: “We have one breathing apparatus between the three of us. We are suffocating”
Soon after this last message was sent the cables of the lift snapped and the carriage plunged towards earth, smashing through the concrete floor and ending up some seven feet beneath the basement. Regulations apparently state that the lift should have been shut down as soon as the fire broke out but, tragically this did not happen. The fire itself was also caused by a catastrophic failure to adhere to regulations. Out of the 38 regulations in place to prevent such a tragedy as this happening, only 16 were adhered to. Russia will be sombre after learning of these deaths so tragic. People might be a bit miffed that they can’t get their favourite T.V show, but such petty annoyances will be replaced by a national grief at the horrific nature of these three people’s deaths. Investigations are now likely into why so many regulations were not adhered to.
A lift manufacturing company in France has been forced to begin removing the buttons from hundreds of its products after it was discovered that they contained the radioactive material Cobalt 60. Shockingly, around 20 staff at the factory in question are believed to have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation because of the mishap which appears to have happened when 600 Otis lifts were refurbished using materials which had been supplied by an Indian firm.
The Nuclear Watchdog of France raised its alert level but qualified this by giving reassurances that there was no danger to human life. The incident is only said to be a Level 2 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; a scale on which 7 represents the most serious nuclear accident.
A spokesperson for Otis has said that the company will remove buttons from 500 – 600 of its lifts as a precaution, even if some of these lifts may pose no danger to public health. This should go some way to reassuring customers who may have had their confidence shaken in the usually reliable company who take their name from the inventor of the very first elevator. The company also reiterated the most important point which is that, ultimately, despite the scary-sounding nature of the event, the buttons do not actually pose and danger to human life.
The removing and checking of the buttons already installed on the renovated elevators is likely to take several weeks and all remaining buttons will likewise be destroyed. The Nuclear Watchdog has said that 5 Indian companies are believed to have been behind the exporting of the contaminated products and they are now all under investigation. The French authorities are to keep working very closely with the relevant Indian authorities in an attempt to get to the bottom of what it was which actually went on. How were the materials contaminated, how did they get past safety checks and how was the problem not realised until many of the buttons had already been fitted?
These are questions which it will certainly take time to answer but another, perhaps much larger, question which has been raised by this incident is whether or not it points out the unintended consequences of a globalised world. This incident was luckily very minor but health and safety checks will have to be tightened to ensure something like this, or something worse, does not occur again.
A lift which had broken down a staggering 40 times in three years has now been the cause of one man’s tragic death; the 61 year old from Stafford plunged down the lift shaft during a rescue attempt. The hotel chain has been fined £400,000 for not acting on over 30 recommendations to repair the lift. The ignoring of these recommendations has now led to one man’s death.
The company had said that the £20,000 needed to update the antiquated lift had not been readily available at the time and the defence council stated that: “The group did intend to fully modernise the lift but it did not do so in time”. What makes Mr. Fareham’s death all the more upsetting is that it could have been avoided. Health and Safety experts have confirmed that, if a steel apron had been fitted underneath the cage of the lift, as is standard with more modern lifts, then this would have caught the victim and would have more than likely saved his life and prevented him from serious injury.
The prior quoted Defence QC has said that the death is not the result of “turning a blind eye” or deliberate negligence on the part of the owners. He has claimed that the company was not made fully aware of the dangers the lift posed and has also pointed out that if Mr. Fareham had stayed within the lift he would almost certainly have been rescued by one of the safety engineers who were working to fix the problem. Mr Fareham had said that he needed fresh-air and was trying to lower himself from the lift to the second floor when the accident occurred. However, the group did plead guilty to the charges brought against it; those charges being a failure to adequately train staff and another one based around providing sufficient risk assessment. Such a guilty plea saved the group from paying two separate £300,000 fines but the £400,000 fine is still a stark warning to anybody else who may attempt to avoid making vital safety improvements to their lifts.
The lift has now been repaired and made fully safe and the hotel itself has been sold on to another company; this will be of little consolation, however, to those who are mourning the loss of Mr. Fareham, who was due to give a speech at a conference the day after he fell to his death.
India has been left outraged and appalled as an eight year old girl has been crushed to death by an escalator in the major airport of the country’s capital city.
Jyotsna Jethani perished after an escalator in the arrivals lounge bizarrely ripped open after a passengers travel bag was caught up in it. The horror of the incident was summed up by the Indian Times which said: If escalators can kill in the capital of the country and that too at the airport, which is a gateway to India, things are quite bad”. An immediate and prompt investigation has been called for the Civil Aviation Minister, with a two-member enquiry committee ordered to report back its findings on what went wrong within 24 hours. Such a speedy deadline only serves to re-emphasise the nationwide outrage which has greeted this tragedy.
The girl’s parents, obviously devastated by the horrific way they have lost their child, refused offers of compensation, saying that had the money been 50 times as much, it still would not give them back their child. The family had arrived for a regularly scheduled flight on Monday morning, but there trip soon turned into something akin to a horror movie when there was a minor stampede on an escalator when a passenger’s bag became stuck. In the mêlée which ensued, the young girl became trapped in what has been described as the “gaping” hole which had opened up at the bottom of the escalator. “She was flailing her legs and screaming, but I could do nothing,” the girl’s mother has tragically recalled. She went on to reminisce about how nobody would help them, stop the escalator or help to pull her out. After the panic had settled two parents were left without a daughter and India itself was left with a national tragedy.
Consumers in a shopping centre were left shocked after a man tragically fell to his death off an escalator. The Cornerhouse Complex in Nottingham was left stunned when Christopher Harris fell two floors from the escalator on a Thursday. He did not die instantly from the fall but, after being taken to the Queens Medical Centre he succumbed to the seriousness of his injuries.
Obviously, the first concern of the Health and Safety inspectorate was to determine what, if anything, might have caused the fall. An examination of the escalator determined that it was safe and that no faults had occurred to cause Mr. Harris’ death. Thus, it was an investigation which really raised more questions than it did actually answer, but the shopping centre itself will be relieved that they are not to blame for the tragedy which took place.
A spokesperson for the shopping complex has said that: “The Cornerhouse are working with the police and relevant authorities to fully investigate the incident and our deepest sympathy goes to all friends and family”. The spokesperson went on to reiterate that “The escalators are serviced and maintained to correct standards and were in fact inspected and cleared after the incident by a registered escalator engineer”. This would seem to be backed up by the coroner who has confirmed that the death is not considered suspicious and will thus not investigated as such. Thus attention turns from trying to find someone to blame, as there is nobody to blame, to finding how such an accident took place and how Mr. Harris sadly lost his life.
We all use escalators every day and Mr. Harris was no different, stepping onto one at quarter-past four on a regular Thursday as he shopped in the Cornerhouse. He could not have known the tragedy that was about to happen and his family and friends must be devastated at the sudden loss of Mr. Harris in such peculiar circumstances. Hopefully the Nottinghamshire Police’s appeal for witnesses will be heeded and someone will come forward who will be able to shed some light on what actually happened. Whilst it has been made clear that nobody is at fault, nor that the death is suspicious, his family, friends, and the Cornerstone shopping complex as well will want the closure of knowing how such a horrific accident could take place and what measures are needed to stop it happening again.
An accident involving a ski-lift has raised concerns about its safety and the thoroughness of the safety checks which were carried out on the gondola a few short months before the accident occurred. Whistler is due to host many events in the 2010 winter Olympics and such publicity as this will not be welcome by a management who have just spent in the region of$52million promoting the brand new Peak 2 Peak Gondola.
More than 50 people had to be evacuated during the accident, which saw one of the towers supporting the gondola collapse. Skiers were trapped in around 30 separate gondolas for around 3 hours in temperatures which got as low as -10 Celsius. The lift was built in 1994 and had recently undergone an extensive safety inspection. After this latest accident, one must raise queries about the thoroughness and acceptability of such inspections.
The main focus for Whistler now will be trying to distance the accident on Excalibur from the new multi-million Peak 2 Peak lift. Whilst the troubled Excalibur links the base of Whistler’s two mountains, the brand new lift spans the near 3-mile gap between their summits. It is an ambitious project and a lot of money has gone into ensuring that it is as safe as is possible. Clearly an accident that high up could be much, much worse than one which occurs at the base of the mountains. The British Columbian Safety Authority loaded each part of the Gondola with 2250kg of concrete to test whether it could hold the weight (it could) and every possible back up, from power-supply to motor has been taken care of. The owners are clearly determined to make sure that mistakes, if there were any with Excalibur, are not repeated this time around. The P.R campaign for Whistler is now shifting from promoting this new lift to repairing the reputation of the site in general; customers need to be confident before they step onto the fantastic new lift in the sky.
Whistler will now be looking towards the 2010 Winter Olympics to help rebuild its reputation and restore its prominence as a world leader in ski holidays. No serious injuries occurred in this accident which the resort must be thankful for. Its customers and its management have to pick themselves up, dust off the snow and begin to climb that tricky mountain towards consumer confidence once again.
