During a busy rush hour on February 18, a queue of people were suddenly flung off an ascending escalator after it malfunctioned and suddenly reversed. People tumbled down the escalator, and landed in a massive heap of bodies at the bottom.

Panic turned to confusion as eyewitnesses reported other commuters continued to use the malfunctioning escalator, which was not stopped and/or cordoned off after the accident. Oddly, the official Weibo account for the Ningbo Metro Transportation Operations announced that there had not been an escalator incident. Instead, it posted that all of the escalators at Dongmenkou station were “operating normally.”

It turns out that the Ningbo Metro was factually accurate in announcing that there had not been an accident at its Dongmenkou Station. The incident occurred in a tunnel leading to a nearby mall, so the escalator did not fall under the jurisdiction and responsibility of the Ningbo Metro. The name of the mall was not identified.

Although Chinese media reported that only five people sustained minor injuries from the accident, over ten people were taken to No. 113 People’s Liberation Army Hospital for medical treatment. Of those, five were admitted, all women between the ages of 20 and 40. Alhough most victims suffered minor injuries, one 31 year-old woman tore her knee.

Here’s the video:

Related:

• 3 Year-Old Kunming Girl Dies In Escalator Accident
• Guangzhou Escalator Suddenly Speeds Up Creating a Pile of Hurt Bodies
• Boy Swallowed Up in Another Deadly Escalator Accident in China

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Video surveillance shows three young girls playing close to a moving escalator on the fourth floor of a mall in Kunming, Yunnan.

Two of the children were able to jump from step to step but, three year-old Xixi was too small to follow them. Instead, she played with the moving handrail. She was soon lifted up and over the side of the escalator before falling four floors to the ground below.

Xixi later died from her injuries on the way to the hospital. An investigation is said to be pending.

Escalator accidents involving children are all too common in China. Just last week, a two year-old girl broke her finger in an escalator accident at a shopping mall in Jiangxi. Despite losing a lot of blood, the girl’s finger was saved.

Last November, a trampling incident at a mall in Nanjing sent 15 schoolchildren to the hospital. In October, a four year-old boy died after an escalator at a Chongqing subway station “swallowed” him.

Finally, in what might be the worst escalator fatality in China last year,  a woman was swallowed after a floor panel collapsed in a Hubei mall.  As her final act, the woman threw her child to safety before disappearing under the panel.

The Hubei mall incident prompted various malls, subway stations, and other locations using escalators to place a “safe to step on” decal on their escalator floor panels.

Here’s the video of the most recent incident:

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A trampling incident involving an escalator has injured 16 primary students going to a playground at a mall in Nanjing, Jiangsu.

At around 10 yesterday morning, some 40 to 50 Grade 1 and 2 students from the Yuhuatai Experimental School were going to Happy World at the Rsun Mall as part of their annual autumn outing. As Sina News reports, the kids got onto an escalator to the third floor, but the double glass doors to the playground there were locked. The small platform on the third floor was only three square meters, so with kids coming up the escalator it quickly filled up leading to a pileup and injuries.

Nearly 20 students were on the escalator at the time of the incident. Sixteen were taken to Pukou Hospital, of which five are listed in serious condition and have been transferred to the hospital’s children ward.

Related:

• The Deadly School Stampede: China’s Annual Tragedy
• Shanghai Police Respond to Deadly New Year’s Trampling at Historic Bund Waterfront
• Fainting Passenger Sparks Panicked Stampede on Guangzhou Metro
• One Second a Woman is Riding a Department Store Escalator, The Next Second She’s Dead
• Boy Swallowed Up in Another Deadly Escalator Accident in China

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[This post contains graphic content which may be upsetting to some readers]

An escalator in China has claimed another life at a subway station in Chongqing yesterday.

A four year-old boy died after he was reportedly left unattended with his three year-old sister at the Red Flag Brook subway station, a busy transfer point for the city’s Line 3 and 6 subway routes. At around 11am, the boy was playing with his back to an escalator when he suddenly fell down, and was pulled into the handrail mechanism.

Eyewitnesses say the mother rushed back and frantically tried to pull the boy out herself, but was unsuccessful. After a minute of trying, the boy stopped moving.

Attempts to revive the boy at the hospital were unsuccessful.

Later that afternoon, the Chongqing Municipal Rail Transport Corporation reminded parents to keep a close eye on their kids:

The rail corporation is very saddened at this kind of incident. We again remind all commuters to maintain care of their children and elderly in order to prevent such accidents from ever happening again.

This past July, a mother died a horrific death on video when she fell through an unsecured floor panel while visiting a shopping mall in Hubei. The incident became so entrenched in the public’s mind that shopping malls throughout China affixed decals to escalator floor panels in order to assure patrons they won’t fall through.

In July 2011, a 13 year-old teenager died and 40 people were injured when an escalator headed to the upper floor of the Beijing Zoo Station of the Beijing Metro suddenly slammed into reverse, causing a pile-up of bodies at the bottom.

Unattended children injured in accidents involving escalators have happened before in China, too. This past June, mall surveillance video recorded an unaccompanied child falling from the second floor of a Guangxi shopping mall after playing with an escalator handrail.

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[This post contains content that may be upset some readers]

Deadly, dysfunctional escalators have again captured national attention in China again after a freak accident killed a mother at a Hubei shopping mall in eastern China.

A surveillance video captures the horrifying incident in which the mother is seen disappearing into an unsecured floor panel at the top an escalator at the Annian shopping mall in Jingzhou.

The victim, 30 year-old Xiang Liujuan, was accompanying her son from the sixth to seventh floor. Xiang’s son also nearly fell inside the escalator, but was heroically thrown by Xiang into the grasp of department store greeters that can be seen waiting on the seventh floor.

As seen from the video (below), no attempt was made to activate the “emergency stop” button on the escalator by the two greeters or a maintenance staff worker that was present at the time of the incident. All three workers walked away in confusion after Xiang disappeared inside the escalator.

Rescue efforts to reach Xiang took four hours by firefighters and maintenance workers, who cut out part of the escalator to extract her. During this time, a Weibo user that was identified as Xiang’s sister-in-law kept posting messages praying that Xiang would be safely rescued.

Preliminary reports suggest a misplaced screw during repairs made the day before caused the floor panel to give way.

Here’s the leaked surveillance video of the incident (contains shocking content):

And then yesterday, another escalator mishap was reported in the news.

The arm of a one year-old child got caught inside an escalator mechanism at the Sun Mall in Wuzhou, Guangxi. He had to have his arm amputated at the elbow to be freed.

Escalator accidents have commonly occurred in China, resulting in injuries and sometimes death.

The most serious case happened in July 2011 when a 13 year-old teenager died and 40 people were injured when an escalator headed to the upper floor of the Beijing Zoo Station of the Beijing Metro suddenly slammed into reverse, causing a pile-up of bodies to form at the bottom.

In 2010, 24 people were injured when an escalator at the Guomao Station of the Shenzhen Metro suddenly began going in reverse. The next year, days after the Beijing Metro tragedy, another escalator accident injured four people at the Shenzhen Metro’s Qinghu Station when eyewitnesses said it began moving backwards. Also in 2011, three people were injured in a mysterious incident involving an escalator at the Xiamen Railway BRT Station.

In 2012, a nine year-old boy died instantly when he stuck his head out from a moving escalator in a Beijing shopping mall. In 2013, eight students were injured while taking an escalator at an amusement center in Shenzhen, four of whom were in serious condition.

Last year, a malfunctioning escalator at the Guangzhou East Railway Station suddenly sped up, sending 11 people to the hospital. Also in 2014, a woman pushing a baby stroller caused an escalator to malfunction at the busy People’s Square Station on the Shanghai Metro, leading to ten injured people.

Just last month, an unaccompanied child playing with an escalator fell from the second floor of a Guangxi shopping mall.

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There are currently 103 spiral escalators in the world, all of which were made by Mitsubishi Electric. The Daimaru Department Store marks the company’s largest order since it began manufacturing spiral escalators in 1985.

In case you were curious about the mechanics of how a spiral escalator works, it’s actually quite complicated. Mitsubishi Electric “explains”:

Horizontal speed decreases as it moves along the slope, making circular designs impractical. Mitsubishi Electric’s engineers overcame this dilemma by inventing the Center Shift Method, shifting the center of the circle around which the escalator rotates in response to the degree of gradient, realizing smooth rotational movement in perfect harmony with vertical movement.

The World Daimaru Department Store officially opens in May.

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The escalator in the No. 6 underpass to the train station unexpectedly accelerated during a early morning rush of passengers at around 6am on August 26.

Some people were able to quickly run away from the escalator to try and make their trains, but those who couldn’t escape suffered some painful injuries.  

Eleven victims were sent to hospital and all are said to be in stable condition. The majority of the victims had skin abrasions and lacerations, and were discharged shortly afterwards.

Emergency Room Director Zeng Yuhui said that two patients had more serious injuries and were required to be admitted overnight. Both are children: one has broken bones while the other requires stitches for deep cuts.

Mr Huang was at the scene:

We were on the escalator when it suddenly sped up. I hadn’t even reacted when I got crushed inside a mass of people. One of the children that fell down had her face cut by a luggage case, and my niece suffered serious injuries when she had her ear torn away.

The escalator involved in incident has been shut down. The railway station says it will look into what happened.

Photos: Southern Metropolis Guangzhou, Money 163

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