Saturday, October 09, 2004
Incident Report: Friday 08th October, 5:00 pm.
O, M and I were in Lower One for the last hour and closing whatever the reference library is called now. Everyone was out and we were going to use the lift to get down to the ground floor. However, when we were all in I pressed the button for the ground floor, the outer door closed but the inner door did not, it got about three quarters closed then seemed to stick. We tried pressing several buttons but they didn’t work. I then pressed the emergency call button. The emergency call button did not work. With the library closed we tried to attract the attention of whoever was still downstairs. I started drumming with my feet on the floor of the lift. This was heard downstairs but they didn’t realise where it was coming from. Eventually C came up, saw we were trapped and went back downstairs again. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then L came up to see why we hadn’t brought the Ref till down. She saw we were trapped and went back downstairs. After a short while C came back up to tell us they were going to lower the lift and went back downstairs.
After another couple of minutes we began to go down. K was operating the manual release and seemed to stop every few feet and had to be persuaded by L and C to keep going. When we got downstairs it turned out that neither C nor K knew/had remembered about the key to manually open the lift doors and it was only L that had gone to find it. However, neither she nor C were able to open the lift door and it took K about a minute of fiddling around to open it, despite L explaining to him what to do.
Recommendations:
1) The ground-floor/reference side inner door is broken.
2) The lift should not be used again until we can be sure that the in-lift emergency call button will work.
3) I don’t think we have the emergency call out phone number of the lift company on the safety notice in the lift-engine room, though I could be wrong.
4) Immediate refresher training on lift emergency procedures for all staff but especially for all custodians likely to work in The Reopened Library. The only custodian present when the lift emergency procedure was explained was P. K and the others don’t know what to do. We had a similar situation with P being the only custodian who knew where the power source for the security gates was and how to turn them on/off.
5) As part of custodian duties when the library is being closed they should have to bring the lift down to the ground floor and lock it for the night with the doors open. If the lift had broken down when we were halfway between the lower-first floor and the ground floor I wonder if we’d been noticed.
6) Is the lift shaft airtight when all the outer doors are closed?
What did you do at work yesterday?
O, M and I were in Lower One for the last hour and closing whatever the reference library is called now. Everyone was out and we were going to use the lift to get down to the ground floor. However, when we were all in I pressed the button for the ground floor, the outer door closed but the inner door did not, it got about three quarters closed then seemed to stick. We tried pressing several buttons but they didn’t work. I then pressed the emergency call button. The emergency call button did not work. With the library closed we tried to attract the attention of whoever was still downstairs. I started drumming with my feet on the floor of the lift. This was heard downstairs but they didn’t realise where it was coming from. Eventually C came up, saw we were trapped and went back downstairs again. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then L came up to see why we hadn’t brought the Ref till down. She saw we were trapped and went back downstairs. After a short while C came back up to tell us they were going to lower the lift and went back downstairs.
After another couple of minutes we began to go down. K was operating the manual release and seemed to stop every few feet and had to be persuaded by L and C to keep going. When we got downstairs it turned out that neither C nor K knew/had remembered about the key to manually open the lift doors and it was only L that had gone to find it. However, neither she nor C were able to open the lift door and it took K about a minute of fiddling around to open it, despite L explaining to him what to do.
Recommendations:
1) The ground-floor/reference side inner door is broken.
2) The lift should not be used again until we can be sure that the in-lift emergency call button will work.
3) I don’t think we have the emergency call out phone number of the lift company on the safety notice in the lift-engine room, though I could be wrong.
4) Immediate refresher training on lift emergency procedures for all staff but especially for all custodians likely to work in The Reopened Library. The only custodian present when the lift emergency procedure was explained was P. K and the others don’t know what to do. We had a similar situation with P being the only custodian who knew where the power source for the security gates was and how to turn them on/off.
5) As part of custodian duties when the library is being closed they should have to bring the lift down to the ground floor and lock it for the night with the doors open. If the lift had broken down when we were halfway between the lower-first floor and the ground floor I wonder if we’d been noticed.
6) Is the lift shaft airtight when all the outer doors are closed?
What did you do at work yesterday?
