Women killed on elevator in Boston

What a tragic loss. Anyone with any info on what happend?

I work in MA and haven't been able to get any more info from anyone other than what you see in the news. Sounds like she may have overloaded it though and it broke traction.... it was an old bird cage style car i think.

If that happened, the safties should have set.

Last I heard there was a switch jumped out and someone pushed a hall button and car took off with doors open. No telling who did jumping it was scissors gate with swing doors. The woman was moving like a roll of carpet.

safeties wouldn't necessarily set if it broke traction.... the car would need to reach the governor tripping speed for that. Where it was already at the lobby and only had i think one floor below it i doubt it would get to that speed... i would say that another circuit would stop it but with the vintage it may not have much.... holy hell though if it was a switch that someone jumped.

If it is another jumper left behind accident this would be the 5th death I know of since 2007 when the Time Out Jumper was invented and available to the Elevator industry. All the majors refuse to add it to their safety program even though they know it will prevent injury and save lives. We have elevator men going to jail for forgetting a jumper! All for no reason a jumper that times out is harmless! Stay safe guys

Actually spoke to someone at the state level that works with someone involved with the investigation - apparently it was not a jumper left behind but operator error.... older bird cage style elevator with the typical manually operated accordion gate on the car and swing doors at each landing. Passenger was loading on something large like one of the mattresses or box springs that come in a box, she was not fully in the elevator but the hall door closed making up that circuit then the item she was loading made up the gate switch, a lower floor call was already in place, and being an older birdcage style car with a manual gate meant there were no open and close limits for the car gate, so once that gate switch was made up the car took off... again just what I was told by someone who knows the elevator portion of the investigation ended up finding out it was truly an accident.

Thanks for the info. There is valuable info with every accident and we can only make improvements with that info shared by all.

Thanks for the information ElevatorGuy128. Alway sad to hear about someone getting hurt. Makes me wonder if the swing doors had the proper distance from hoisway face of the door to the edge of the hoistway landing sill.

Always hated older style claymore type gate switches for that very reason. Can't really creat DCL for some of these older cars, but a much better gate switch, maybe an interlocking or hatch lock type, would help.

Do you have any links to back up claim elevator guys going to jail? I have not seen any articles on this happening.

First link googling Elevator Mechanic Charged



https://abc7ny.com/brooklyn-elevator-accident-broken-leg-victim/564190/

Pretty good article here: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/10/26/allston-elevator-accident-report

You are 100% correct. When will the Code start requiring replacement of 100 year old elevators? This was a death trap.