A recent safety regulator report shows importance of elevator maintenance after paramedics and a patient experiencing a serious medical emergency were trapped inside one for 25 minutes, delaying their transport to hospital.
The incident unfolded in a 60s-era West Vancouver apartment building last July, according to the Technical Safety B.C. report.
The 18-floor tower has two elevators, but at the time only one was working and it had been that way for nearly two years, as major upgrades to the other elevator were delayed. The single working elevator had broken down six times in the two months leading up to the incident, the report says.
Paramedics took the elevator to the 14th floor following a 911 call. B.C. Emergency Health Services told investigators the person was “having a severe type of medical emergency requiring immediate treatment and any type of delay in higher care could have extreme consequences.”
While three EMTs loaded the patient, in a stretcher, into the elevator, the door tried to close on them four times, and two paramedics eventually put their hands on the top of the door to stop it from closing, the report recounts.
“The force on the top of the door combined with the set gap between the top rail and the eccentric roller allowed the door to disengage from the rail guide,” it reads. A mechanic had mentioned a few months earlier that the rollers were “maxed out” and couldn’t be further adjusted to help keep the door on track and prevent it from jamming.
“The motor could not overcome the extra force required to move the door while it was derailed from the guide, and the elevator control went into fault mode while to elevator door was only partially closed,” the report continues.
An EMT then “manually forced” the door closed, and the group was trapped. The elevator made scraping noises as it descended and stopped at a few floors without opening before reaching the lobby.
The paramedics and patient were stuck in the elevator until firefighters arrived and used the jaws of life to pry the doors open, the report says.
The report does not include details about the patient’s condition or what happened to them after they arrived at the hospital.
Investigators said manually forcing the door open while it kept shutting made it derail from the track, but “high use, age and wear” made it more susceptible to dislodging.
Contributing factors in the incident listed in the report include worn door track components not being identified during inspections and the delayed upgrade of the second elevator, leading to “high demand use and critical operation” of the remaining elevator, which likely factored into maintenance decisions.
The report noted that the elevator was in general operation mode, and if it were in independent mode, requiring a key from the building manager, it wouldn’t have automatically attempted to close, which led to the eventual door jam. The manager told investigators they would have given the key to paramedics if they had asked.
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