Anxious wait for trapped lift passengers

Two women were stuck inside an elevator in the Spring Street parking building in Tauranga for about 40 minutes on Thursday evening. File Photo.

UPDATED 4.15PM: Two more women found themselves trapped inside a stuck elevator at the Spring Street parking building in Tauranga.

Chloe Griffin says she was trapped in the lift with another women for just under 30 minutes this afternoon, starting at about 1.45pm.

'The other woman got on at the ground floor and I got in at level three. We went up a bit and then it just made this huge bang, then nothing would work. The lift had a bit of a sway to it too, it was my worst fears come true.

'The stupid emergency call button wouldn't work. We pressed it and got through to someone at Tauranga City Council but we got cut off, so we just kept pushing it and eventually we got through but you could hardly hear the person, then that call got cut off too.”

In the end Chloe called TCC from her mobile while the other woman trapped in the lift with her called the New Zealand Fire Service. Firefighters eventually freeing the two women shortly before 2.15pm.

A little later, she received a call from her mother saying her lift incident had made it on to the SunLive website, then realised it was someone else who'd had the same experience as her daughter.

'Now I'm thinking, how is it the lift was able to go today if someone got stuck in it last night. I use the lift every day and when I got there this morning at 9am it was going. I'd never been stuck in a lift before, so hopefully it's a one off.”

SunLive has contacted the Tauranga City Council for comment and will update this story once a response has been received.

EARLIER:

Two Tauranga women endured a nervous wait after becoming trapped inside a stuck elevator in the Spring Street parking building.

Using her mobile phone, Elizabeth Simm called SunLive from the elevator after the two women had been stuck inside the broken-down lift for about 30 minutes on Thursday evening.

'We jumped in the lift shortly before 5pm and soon after it started going up, we heard this tremendous ‘bang' and then it just stopped.

'We pressed the emergency button and eventually spoke to someone at Tauranga City Council who said they had to get in touch with the property manager so they could get in touch with a repair man to come get us out.”

Roughly ten minutes after speaking to SunLive, a repair man from elevator manufacturer and maintenance company Schindler Group arrived at the carpark and freed the two women.

Elizabeth says while she is thankful she was stuck inside the lift with someone she knew, and that her mobile phone had reception, the experience was still 'very scary”, especially for the other woman trapped in the lift.

'She was getting pretty upset. She had left her elderly dog locked up inside her shop, thinking she'd only be five minutes, but there we were 40 minutes later.”

And while there was a happy end to the story, Elizabeth is questioning why the emergency call button in the elevator puts people through to the council instead of the repair company.

'When you're in that situation and you're greeted by an automated message, then waiting music, then someone at the call centre who then has to ask someone else what they're meant to do next, it just makes what is a very scary situation even worse.”

A TCC spokesperson explains the lift's emergency phone goes straight to them to make sure council's property manager and the carpark building manager know as soon as possible there is a problem with the lift.

Incidents of this nature also gets logged in council's system so everyone can track the actions and response times. The spokesperson says incidents involving stuck elevators in council-owned buildings is not a recurring issue.

'When the TCC property manager received the call on Thursday he phoned Schindler straight away, but in this instance had to wait a few minutes to get through.

'Once Schindler had received his call their technician was onsite within 20 minutes.”

The spokesperson says the cause for the elevator getting stuck has not yet been confirmed.

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2 comments

TCC needs to review the safety measures

Posted on 02-06-2017 18:05 | By The Sage

Imagine being stuck in a lift and the emergency button doesn't work. What if it was someone without a cell phone. In this day of all the over the top Health and Safety regulations, I do not see anything improving. All they do is put something in writing to put in a manual and cover their cans.


TCC

Posted on 03-06-2017 08:12 | By Capt_Kaveman

all staff and councilors to be completely sacked, this sounds like a lac of maintenance problem


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