Vent: Got called out for a stuck elevator in a 12 story building downtown

Last Tuesday, I was finishing up a door adjustment on a 12 story office building when the fire alarm went off. The power cut, dropping the car about 6 inches and jamming the doors on the 8th floor. I had to manually crank it down to the nearest landing, which took almost 45 minutes in the dark with just my work light. The building manager was not happy about the delay. Has anyone else had a fire alarm cause a worse jam than a normal power loss?

2 comments

2 Comments

joel28016d ago

Manual cranking in the dark sounds like the real problem there.

miles70716d ago

Heard a story once about a fire alarm causing a full hydraulic lock on a freight elevator. The safety brake engaged so hard they couldn't even crank it, had to get the fire department to cut a hatch in the roof of the car to get people out. Your situation sounds rough but at least you could still move it. Makes me think those sudden power cuts from alarms can trigger way worse failsafes than a normal outage.