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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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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The escalator at Qinghu Station is now out of service pending an investigation

Only days after an up-going escalator suddenly slid into reverse on Beijing Metro Line 4 killing a teenager and leaving 30 others injured, a similar accident occurred in Shenzhen leaving two people hurt.

It happened last night (Sunday July 10) at Qinghu Station. Like the incident in Beijing, people were on an escalator when, witnesses say, it went into reverse and began vibrating. Xinhua picks up the story:

“They have been sent to hospital and doctors said they were free of vital-wound,” said Xiao Ping, spokesperson with the Shenzhen branch of the Hong Kong-based Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation, operator of the Shenzhen Subway Line 4, where the accident happened 

Witnesses told Xinhua that the escalator ran backward, trembling, when the people on it fell down on the ground.

Xiao, however, denied the witnesses’ accounts.

“The exact number of the injured and the cause of the accident are both under investigation,” said Xiao.

There are not many people in the station as it was not the rush hour, according to witnesses.

The MTR Corporation* of Hong Kong operates both the affected lines in Beijing and Shanghai. Following the death in Beijing, the government launched a nationwide check of escalator safety.

*Full disclosure: The writer of this article worked for two years for the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong.

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