Charles Liu, A 26 year-old mother and her five month-old baby daughter were killed after an apartment elevator in Xi’an, Shaanxi plunged 31 floors.
The accident occurred January 29 at a residential high-rise in the Sunshine New Area. Zhou Zhengjie, the victims’ husband and father, narrowly escaped the incident when he returned to the apartment to grab something he had forgotten. Police are investigating the incident and have detained a high-ranking manager of the elevator company as well as the building’s property manager.
The elevator had fallen to the fifth floor of the building, where witnesses say they heard a loud crash. The impact of the falling elevator was so great that it bent the elevator doors outward. Investigators later discovered the roof of the elevator sustained major damage.
Perhaps the most alarming detail however, is that the elevator, manufactured by the Shanghai Yongda Elevator Company, was inspected and passed its annual safety inspection the day before the accident.
Zhou and other residents of the apartment building say the elevator has had numerous problems in the past. Xiaoli, a resident who has lived in the building since May 2015, said the elevator has been suspended from service on a number of occasions. Residents in the building now say they are too scared to use the elevator. One resident on the 31st floor said he was moving out temporarily until the issue has been addressed.
Yesterday, full safety inspections were mandated for all elevators in the province by the Shaanxi quality inspection bureau.
Last July, a Hangzhou woman was killed in a gruesome elevator accident at an industrial location when she somehow became caught in a gap between the floor and the elevator car. The company in charge of operating the elevator, the Hangzhou Tongda Elevator Engineering Co, had been blacklisted by the provincial quality inspection bureau.
With 610,000, China has the third-highest number of elevators in the world behind Spain and the USA. There were 48 elevator-related accidents reported in China in 2014, and 36 fatalities.
Modern elevators are ordinarily designed with safety measures like multiple cables, emergency brakes, and counterweights in order to deal with catastrophic failures such as power failure or cable malfunction.
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