Saftey Over 40 Years

With safety as important as ever, with you guys covering zillions of units and pressured to get to get the job in on time. I would like to share safety related stories that myself and and my father were involved in from my book "Elevator Man Stories"

Will try to make weekly installments.

As Always Work Safe,

Jim

As a kid I was forced to visit this old Barber. While getting my hair cut he asked me what my Dad did for a living. I told him that he was an Elevator Man and worked for Otis Elevator. “No kidding” he replied, I worked for Otis for a few days until I was drilling a hole in a hoistway and a bridge plank came down the hatch and left a row of slivers in the back of my jacket and that’s how I became a barber.”

Hmm, well that's quite understandable.

Unrelated story- I always wore my wedding ring, until a guy on the job fell off some scaffolding. A nail hooked his wedding ring, and pulled his finger off. That was the last day I ever wore mine.

40 Years Part II

Mom always seemed to worry just a little when Dad went off to work. As a little kid I didn’t know what was bothering her until one day there was a knock on our door. It was summer and our living room was filled with kids playing games, eating watermelon and just generally messing around. The man at the door turned out to be Phil, one of Dads best friends and fellow elevator man.

Mom asked us to be quiet and not trash the house until her return. When asked what happened she told us, Dad was hurt and Phil was taking her to the hospital. The next time I saw my Father he was in a hospital, flat on his back and not happy. He had been working on a toe-guard junction box at the bottom floor, lost his balance and fell into the hoistway. The fall was a short one but did its damage. He was very lucky because he hit the pit floor missing all of the pit equipment. He was in a hospital bed for the next month or so and then rested at home for the next two months.

Great Story CC...Looking forward to the next one...

Over the next month we visited Dad every day and during those visits to the hospital, he must have felt I was old enough to appreciate the dangers of working on elevators. He started telling me about his near misses and the not-so-fortunate results of other accidents in which he was involved.

While adjusting a car and getting it up to speed, a helper working in an adjacent hoistway had ventured too far into the hoistway belonging to Dad’s running car. The Car hit him and knocked him down the hoistway. The helper fell two floors severely breaking his arm. All work stopped so this man could be helped. Dad suggested keeping the man still and not moving him. He told them all to keep him as comfortable as possible until medical help arrived. He was overruled by the Foreman who was an old timer and thought he knew it all. Well, he didn’t. The foreman tied the broken arm to the man’s chest with #16 wire and had him climb up a ladder to the landing. Two minutes later help arrived. Due to the extensive damage to the arm, the move and the shoddy first aid, he lost his arm.

Dad went on to tell me about another large job he was working in LA when a skip with four men aboard fell eight floors when the rigging for the three-to-three rope blocks failed. Three men rode it out but didn’t survive the impact. The fourth man managed to grab a spreader beam during the descent and was able to hang on, unfortunately he was hit by the rest of the rigging coming down the hatch and was also killed.

During those days accidents were commonplace with no safety skips, guard rails or harnesses. The companies tried putting guard rails on the skips, but found out we would just use them to gain the extra height to work rather than pulling the skips up by hand. Also, there were always things coming down the hoistways. Guard rails just barred our emergency exit so the crews resisted the idea. I, personally, never worked off a skip equipped with safeties until about 1970. Once the idea caught on and the crews got used to them, they saved many lives.

Dad went on to tell of a freak accident that happened on an out-of-town job. The crews were working four tens in order to bail on Thursday so they could spend three days at home. It just so happened that after normal working hours, a full roll of carpet came down the hoistway and landed directly on top of one of the mechanic’s feet. The roll crushed his foot along with the steel toe that was supposed to protect it. The man never worked again and to make matters worse, the accident happened after contractual working hours so he had a tough time getting his benefits.

My home elevator has 10 year history from http://www.saneielevator.com and it work well so far.save my momey

The company dispatched my Father to a Victorville cement plant to find the cause of the death of an inside maintenance man that had been killed while working on one of the plant’s elevators. The man had been crushed in the pit while he and another maintenance man were attempting to repair the elevator. Dad discovered that the limit switches were not explosion proof and concrete dust had filled them up to the point where the finger contacts couldn’t open. A sad story for the man’s family and equally distressing for the other man who was running the elevator.

Here's one for ya Christy.

2 guys doing a controller and cab mod in a refinery. Part of the mod was to install a new platform in the elevator. Had counterweights hung at the top. Rise about 250 feet.

New platform was a genuine SOB to get into place. They beat and banged on it for the better part of 2 hours, before getting it into place. They did NOT install the platform bolts.

Untied the counterweights, helper got on the car top iron to run the elevator down to get the mechanics tools off. Platform had around 3000 lbs. of concrete set on it to counterbalance not having a cab.

Mechanic out on the 1st floor telling helper to run the car down so he could get the tools off. As helper ran car down, Fire lintel caught the platform, flipped it out of the stiles, and dumped the 3000 lbs of concrete.

Helper rode that rig 250 feet straight up and was thrown into the ceiling with such force, fat cells were stuck to the ceiling and dripping oil for months.

Then he got the 250 ft. ride to the pit.

Of course he did not survive.
Was a halloween eve in the mid 80's.

I got to go to the job with the BA on Monday. I was the Steward for the company that the incedent happened. Was gut wrenching.

And the worse part was staring at the platform bolts not 10 feet away, sitting on a 55 gallon drum..

Quite a story Broke Sheave, one or two bolts could have saved a life and not to mention years of grief for family members.

Work Safe Yourself,

Jim

My Father was involved in and investigated another fatality in Hawaii. Even in his later years he couldn’t get this accident out of his mind. A 200 pound man was in a disabled elevator. The building maintenance man opened the hoistway doors with a lunar key. The car was around twenty-four inches below the top of the entrance. The maintenance man, who was a little guy, got a ladder and entered the car. He then assisted the man down the ladder. While climbing out of the car it leveled up to the next landing, pinning him at his mid section between the car and hoistway sill at the next floor. The man died shortly thereafter. The fire department arrived and suggested cutting the platform around the body to recover it. The elevator man that had arrived within minutes of the accident suggested tying a rope under the man’s arms and running the car down on inspection. They decided that was the best approach and went ahead and the body ended up on the car. Dad found that the building had short floors and the elevator had a very long leveling zone. The weight of the 200 pound man stretched the ropes enough to keep the up level switch off the next floors leveling vane. After the man exited the car and the maintenance man stepped on the ladder the ropes un-stretched to the point where the up leveling switch engaged the vane and the car was able to level up to the next floor. Dad made the necessary controller changes to this non-Haughton equipment to prevent another accident.

Wow, scary stuff.

Here's the time I almost got killed.

It was a little cantilevered hydro, a 40 fpm, 1000# capacity residential elevator, at a church. Bottom floor opened outdoors. Doesn't "sound" deadly, right? Hall doors were swing, like a door in a house. Remember, residential elevators have no refuge space in the pit, just 8 to 12 inches, enough room for the sling and platform, with maybe 2" of runby.

We get comfortable with commercial elevators, always knowing where the refuge space is, knowing it's there. Not so with this one.

My mechanic had just finished wiring the new controller, said he and his helper had checked everything out, and they were ready for inspection. When I was younger, I used to beleive people at their word. Mistake #1.

I put my "hatchet" in the interlock, sent the car up, and got in the pit to retreive a tool, without shutting the power off, or securing the car. Mistake #2.

It was a windy day, and the swing hall door slammed shut behind me, with me in the pit. I hadn't even blocked the door from closing. Mistake #3.

The car started coming down, with the toe gaurd obscuring the interlock arm. The door was held secure by the interlock at the top corner of the hall door, but I couldn't reach it now. Doorknob was useless, with the shorting bar hooked in the can.

While in hindsight, I might have kicked the door open, my very first thought was to hit the pit stop switch. And even if I had kicked it open, the car might not have stopped anyway, if the shorting bar had pulled out of the wooden door, and remained in the interlock can. If by chance, with maybe time enough for a single donkey kick, and if I had enough force, and had managed to get the door open this way, I would still have had to crawl out from under the toegaurd, even with the car still coming down. There wasn't enough time to get out my sliderule and compute the odds....

I reached for the pit stop switch, but to my dismay, it did not work. I flipped it off, and the car kept coming down. No limit switches in the pit that I could hit to stop the car, they were all mounted on the car top. Holy Crap, this is it, what am I going to do now?

(Now this whole incident happened in the blink of an eye. Takes longer to tell it now, but it all went by in a flash, just a few milliseconds. I'll never forget it as long as I live)

As a last resort, I threw my arm up alongside the platform, squeezing it into the corner of the shafts' drywall, even as the platform was now digging into my shoulder. I extended my fingers as far as I could, car still decending, in a desperate, last-chance bid to trip the lock. I just barely was able to tip the interlock roller to unlock the door, with the very tip of my finger, freeing the door, and stopping the car. As the car came to a stop, my body was now pushed down far enough, to the point where my fingertip came off the roller, but the door had popped open.

It was at the very last split-second to trip it for me, the very last chance to save my life. Otherwise, I would have been crushed to death, like a paper cup in that shallow pit.

My life came down to the length of my arm, and some quick thinking.

But it's far better, to "think ahead".

I had no pit props with me. Mistaske #4.

1. Don't rely on just one method for securing a car
2. Don't assume the safety circuit works unless you prove it yourself. As years go by, it needs to be checked again anyway. Sh*t happens, and things can break shorted.
3. Don't get in a resdential pit without a pit pipe stand.
4. Block swing doors from closing.
5. Secure the power.
6. Don't trust your safety to anyone's word. Verify for yourself.

WOW Vic...

Closest I ever came was on a recable. 20 some odd years ago. Standing on a back of a cab 42 stories up, pulling a cable over the sheave and the @%#$# marriage broke. As the cable came down the hatch my arm got caught in an asshole in the cable and fortunately wedged my arm in the holdback, rather than taking me 42 floors down. I was able to reach the ratchet, but the cable in the hold back and tighten it, and then holler for help so my buddies could get me freed up...

I wake up some nights thinking about it.

Listening to these stories always make me a little sick to my stomach with a nervous feeling.
Earlier today a local fire fighter told me his most recent elevator near miss. An elevator in a local hospital stopped between floors with a patient on a strecher and a nurse attending. The maintenance men were in the machine room when he arrived. He explained to me they may have been trying to move the elevator on thier own. He stopped them and had them shut down the power to the elevator. The fire fighters were then able to safely extract the two passengers.

Now I'm thinking I want to make a educational contribution to our local fire department. If anyone has done so In the past? What have you provided to them (safety classes, books, equipment such as door keys).

Dang, that was close1!

Those were the days before harnesses were widely used, too. A good reminder for everyone not to get too comfy and relaxed on the car top.

Harness???
We didn't even know what one was back in those days. Climb rails 2 or 3 floors with no fall protection 50 stories up, just to hang a chocker.

I'm delighted that safety has moved to the fore front on a lot of these issues, and safer methods for heavy repair have been implemented.

And I don't missing turning back cables, and dealing with hot babbit, not one bit. Hooray for the new shackles!!!!

i read this stuff with bated breath knowing full well the consequences for mistakes. me and my brethren here have mostly been good however there was a accident lately that was nasty for the bloke and the other kone guys.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/putting-together-the-jigsaw-man/story-e6frf7jo-1226114018938

Boy, that was hard to read...Sobers one up real fast....Reminds me of my close brush with being crushed..

BTW, I take it that the term "sitting on the loungeroom floor" is akin to what we would call our "living room floor". Don't you guys have any furniture down under? (hah hah, just kidding around a bit!)

Firefighters vs: Elevators. Before retiring here in Monterey I was asked to give a lecture about elevators to the Seaside FD.(City next to Monterey) I gave them general information regarding entrapments all the while stressing the fact that I didn't fight fires so they shouldn't work on elevators. Also there is always someone on call and usually less than 20 minutes away. Well anyway about an hour after the lecture the trouble calls started coming in. Turns out these guys decided to go out and practice and managed to break every elevator I had on service in Seaside.

Was out of work in Sacramento and got a call from an old friend that owned a company that did business in central California. He needed a guy to cover Monterey. Took the job without question.

It turned out I was replacing a man that had been killed on the job, “Mike.” Mike answered a overtime call a two stop Tri County Elevator. The problem was a bad leveling inductor. The leveling and slow down inductor are mounted to a can that had a light fixture mounted the hinged cover. He opened the cover and was reaching around the can to replace the inductor. The hinged door that had open 120VAC terminals for the light swung closed and the 120VAC terminal touched his wire framed glasses. His left arm was wrapped around the can and completely grounded. He died shortly thereafter. As the hours passed his wife became concerned and called the answering service to see if they knew his last location. They informed her that his last call was over on Cass Street. The other route man “Don” was called and he went to the building. Upon arrival Don looked thru the door gap and saw car top light was on and Mike’s green shirt. Before doing anything he called 911 and then picked the lock opened the door. He checked Mike and there was nothing he could do. The Paramedics arrived and pronounced Mike dead at the scene. Mike left a large family.

The lawsuits followed and it was determined that it was just an accident. Harold did shield the exposed on the exposed circuitry on new installations. He also paid Mike’s wife a years wages which added to the added to the “Workers Comp” settlement.

Here’s one with a better ending.

While was working in Seattle this story started circulating the grapevine and turned out to be true.
Otis construction was slowing down so the Construction Superintendent talked the Service Repair Superintendant into taking on his son until construction picked up again.
The first job the kid was sent out on was for the removal a large generator armature. Come on guys we’ve all been there, they only come out one way. The Repair Super decided to visit the job after approving numerous requests for larger and even larger bearing pullers that came across his desk. Too late the armature was history. Well it’s OK were all family here at the Big “O”
His next job was some code work or something like that in one their anchor jobs in Downtown Seattle.

After the Kids arrival a strange thing occurred. Two guys had missed their floor and were riding the car to the top landing so they could get another crack at their destination in the down direction. The doors opened at the top landing with when a passenger attempted to enter the car. Due to the fact there already two guys on the car there was a minute of confusion, like after you, or you go ahead. Well anyway the door started to close and the guy in the hall reached into the entrance and grabbed the hall door. The car continued at high speed in the down direction. The guy in the hall wasn’t giving up his ride on this day. He had his head far enough into the opening that part of the operator glazed him on the head and he stagering around in the elevator lobby in circles. By this time the elevator was almost long gone. By now the guys in car had figured out something was wrong and hit the stop switch. The car stopped about 8 to 10 feet below the floor and the hoistway doors were just starting to close when the poor chump up on the landing staggered right into the open hoistway. “This guy landed on his feet, not a mark on him and after the fire department got him off the car top with a ladder headed for the stairs and was never heard of or seen again.
When all the Otis suites arrived and asked the young mechanic just what he had done, they fired him on the spot. He had jumped out both the locks and the gate switch. He got his elevators mixed up.

PS: He did get his job back and is probably retired by now.

My old supervisor at Millar had secured a car in a multi-car group, by placing it on inpsection at the top floor, cab lights off, and car door open. He unclutched the hall doors and closed them. Then he went up to the machine room to do something.

In the process of going up and down the stairs to the machine room, they figured he got turned around. When he came back to the top landing, he picked the doors on the wrong car, and stepped into what he thought was a darkened cab. Which turned out to be an empty shaft, and he fell to his death.

Just heard this one today, I'll share it, then take a break!

The fire department rescued someone from a hydro, and blew the doors off the cab. One of the door panels was resting on the hall sill. While the elevator was shut off, waiting for the elevator company to repair it, it drifted downward, wedging that wayward car door panel in between the cab header, and the hall sill.

The piston was not bolted to the platen, and it drifted nearly all the way down. The car was now hanging in space only by virtue of that one car door panel, precariously wedged between the car and shaft, like a jackstand.

An elevator man got on top of the car, and jostled the cab enough to disturb the car door panel. The car fell, and the guy broke some bones, if I heard it right. But he lived.

On my 33rd year in the business, been to 3 fatals. all were the dumb asses fault. wife says im bitter and mean to people, i'm just tired of years of childproofing and getting called out all hours of the night over stupid Crap.

had a car, a hydro at a college that wouldnt make the bottom floor. the kids at the school tossed a coke machine down the hoistway from the 4th floor. they figured out how to get the doors open on this 6 stop.

saw a flat fire hose wrapped around a door operator and the crosshead once, car ran down and ripped all that Crap off. flooded the building, 12 floors.

On a fairly large construction job, a helper gets in the pit of an elevator to do something. He hits the stop switch before entering, with a 24' extension ladder propped up against the rail, facing away from the side counterweight.

As he's at the top of the ladder, he notices the car coming down on him. He screams on the radio at the adjustor, who is in the machine room, putting the car through it's paces. After momentary confusion, the proper mainline is turned off, just in time to take out the top few steps of the extension ladder. The car would have killed him for sure.

So much wrong here...No communication before entering the pit, adjustor didn't verify the safety circuit before getting the car up to speed, etc, etc.

We had just completed Phase One recall on the service car at First National Bank and it was back in service and running fine until … a few months down the line.

I was on call when an overtime call came in on this very elevator. I checked in with the security guard and went looking for the elevator. The PI lights were out so it was a simple matter of picking a couple of locks to find the car. I picked the lock at the bottom floor and no elevator. I traveled to the top floor, picked that lock and still no elevator. I went to mid travel, picked that lock and still no car. But something else was missing … the Comp Ropes. I went back to the top floor for another look, picked the lock again and checked out the hoistway. The traveling cables were there OK, but wait a minute … this is the top landing. This time looked up and there it was, way up in the top of the hoistway. It was time to go to the machine room. I looked down the cable block out in the machine room floor and two inches below the slab was the two to one sheave. By now it was midnight and there was nothing that could be done anyway. I gave the security guard the bad tidings and headed for home.

Because his job was hanging by a thread to begin with, Russ was always acutely aware of his profit and loss statement. Overtime calls on full maintenance jobs stretched that thread a little tighter. So every morning when he hit the office he checked the log for overtime callbacks. If there had been a call you could bet on getting a page at 7:30 am on the dot. The twenty question routine could get a little irritating before the start of the work day. So with his hand on his wallet the questions would begin. “What happened at First National last night?”
“DC Overload was tripped.”
“What caused that?”
“The overhead.”
“Gasp” then “What overhead?”
“The overhead at the top of the hoistway.”
“Did you get the car running again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It was on the safeties.”
“What stopped you from running the car up to release them?”
“The machine beams.”
Phone hits carpet.
Fumbling noise.
“Where are you?”
“First National.”
Dial Tone.

Russ didn’t show at First National for some time, probably because the Gin Joint near the shop didn’t open until eight.
It was time to check out the damage a little further. I knew the comp ropes were missing so I started at the pit. The comp sheave was lying on its side over in a corner. The comp sheave had safeties so the guide rail mounting hardware had pulled out of the pit floor. There was a lot of rope piled up in the pit, but not all of it. The ropes were hanging off something up near the top of the hoistway. Picking the lock up on the twentieth floor solved the mystery of why all the comp ropes weren’t in the pit. When the comp hitch pulled off the safety plank, somehow one of the ropes looped itself over a leveling vane bracket and after sawing it nearly in half, hit its center of gravity and slid to a halt.

Tommy and I started the repair by picking locks, pulling out about 20 feet of rope, cutting it off and piling it on a cart. Needless to say the building personnel were a little concerned about all this chopped up cable lying on a four wheel dolly. With all the comp rope removed from the hoistway we had to get the car off the safeties. About this time Russ shows up, looks around, and shakes his head and heads back to where he had spent the morning.

There was about four inches of clearance between the car and the overhead so there was enough travel left to get the car off its flex guide safeties. The last landing for the car was a mechanical space that had a 25’ high ceiling. To get into the car we used an extension latter to get high enough to cut a hole in the wall above the cars entrance.

Backing up here … a few months back we had installed Phase One and Two on the six passenger cars. There was a new console in the lobby for the security guard. The console had the Fire Service switches along with some security features. The guard that manned this station was, to say the least, overwhelmed by all the switches and lights and had little or no training.
We had a ladder up and were in the process of cutting a hole in the wall when something caught our eye. There was a smoke detector on the wall just above the elevator entrance. You guessed it … the dust from our excavation activated the sensor right in front of our eyes.

The six passenger cars were now sitting at the lobby, doors open on Phase One. The guard panicked, hit the evacuation alarm and called the fire department. By the time I hit the stairs, making the 25 floor descent, all the while squeezing by fleeing building occupants, there were 200 evacuees in front of the building when the San Diego Fire Department pulled up. With a sheepish grin and a turn of the By-Pass switch, normalcy was resumed and it was back to work.

This time I hijacked one of the passenger cars for our personal use, just in case of another disaster. We were able to get inside the car and go through the escape hatch to set up our rigging. We set up an A-Frame in the machine room and with about a ½” to spare, hoisted the car off its safeties. From that point on it was a matter of replacing the comp hitch, repairing the pit equipment and replacing the comp ropes. While cleaning down the hoistway the second smoke detector was activated. This time I was able to get to the Guard Console and prevent him from touching anything. The turn of a key switch and a vanishing act prevented another fiasco without anyone even noticing.

We knew what happened, but not why? The car had so much overhead that when it traveled up into the overhead it didn’t break traction. There was so much overhead that the car traveled right on past the end of the hoistway normal limit cam. The final limit cam mounted on the car ended up above the final limit switch. There it sat stuck in the overhead, grinding away until finally the DC overload tripped, shutting down the whole deal. By rights the car should have broken traction when the counter weights bottomed out on the buffer. Haughton had had problems in the past with traction and never really addressed the issue. We did install cam extensions and the car was returned to service. I answered another call on this elevator a few months later. The car was in the upper final limit and stayed there this time. By chance I started checking the running circuit and felt a faint buzz on one of the relays. There should be no buzz here. This relay had a 220 VDC coil and with the safety circuit open there should be no voltage present whatsoever. The meter indicated around a 140 VAC. This car was an older Haughton ALNC with 220 VDC running circuit and above ground 208 VAC for most of the other logic. This was a throwback to the “Good Old Exciter” days. Fortunately the problem was right out in front of me; I just had to find it. I started pulling controller wire and checking the wiring diagram and low and behold there was a wire that didn’t belong on the DCLB relay. During the Fire Service upgrade we had added a new wire on top of an old wiring change. This wiring change was buried under a pile of old black controller wiring. It also wasn’t on the as-builts that engineering used to engineer the Fire Service revisions. This field wiring mistake plugged 100 VAC into the 220 VDC running circuit. This was not enough to energize the 220 DVC running circuit, but under certain conditions, this stray voltage could keep the running circuit powered up when it shouldn’t happen at all. This was a wake-up call. It took several months for this problem to show up. All of the above makes you stop and think about all the wiring changes made on dozens of elevators still out there in service. What about that jumper that’s missing from your tool box. Anyone who has worked on hundreds of elevators has found that missing jumper left by some other guy. I know I have.

christy<<<>>> nice story.

i take it you are not in the union. or had any formal elevator education.

to whit.

You're wrong...Christy's been around forever....

Ifr-bro you got some learnin' to do Jim Collett has been around a long time

Ifrratedpilot, why would you think Christy is not in the union or have formal training? Was his explanation of the situation over your head or did you not understand the scenario?

If I had never read one of Chrisity posts before after reading this one I would of know this person was one of us. He talks the talk and has walked the walk.

Ifrratedpilot

After reading your posts under several topics I'm going to write it off as a bad day! You seemed a little angry as if someone kicked you dog!

Your mechanical expertise contributions to me are still welcome. Even though I'm Jewish, the owner of a mom & pop shop and consider Jim Christy my friend!

Hey Thanks You Guys,

For Ifrratedpilot, I'll sum it up for ya.

To settle up the union issue, started Local 18 in LA 1963, drafted US Army 1965-67. Adjuster/LR Haughton Elevator San Diego and LA 1967-1972. Service superintendent Haughton(took withdrawal)Elevator Seattle 1972 1974. Back into Local 19 1974-1980 Service Repair/construction Super US Elevator Seattle 1980-1983. 1983-1990 Foreman/Adjuster Schindler Haughton Washington, Oregon and California. Transferred to to Local 8 in Sacramento 1985. LR with Tri County Elevator Monterey California until retirement in 2000.

During Retirement Wrote the national best seller "Elevator Man Stories"

Everybody Work Safe (even Ifrratedpilot)

Regards,

Jim Collett

A fine example of professionalism and wisdom!

Always good to hear from another Haughton Adjuster. Only people who have had the privilege of the B5 Verniers or 1092-IC would understand. Keep Snortin; for Hortin lol

Hi Smitty,

Last brush with B5 1092 IC was in Century City. Stuff was pretty good gear. Way better than B3 or B4 (I think) Do you remember accu-flite? First ones out the door from Spencer Street were sweet. Ran like a regulator on steriods. As per usual Toledo screwed it up with too many feedback circuits. Last Accu-Flight I worked had the State of Californias' Weather Radar sitting right on top of the machine room. At the same time the wire wrap terminal strips had bad connections between wire wrap pin and screw terminal. Too bad when they finally got with it they went away. You may be interested in knowing that some of the Haughton engineers in Toledo are still working for Schindler on the old Haughton stuff.

Regards,

Jim

Accuflight was pretty good stuff for the time. I preferred the GAMs to the SAMs. I adjusted a ton of Goldflight. I guess most of that stuff has been ripped out now. I adjusted the very first Miconic V in DC. That stuff rode like a dream but talk about software problems. I hear Otis ripped that out a year or two ago. In some ways I'd love to work on the newer Schindler stuff... if I didn't have to work for Schindler. I work for a small independent company these days doing what everyone else is doing here ie trying to scrounge information, parts etc. I love the technology although mechanically all the stuff is junk.

When you walk into a Miconic V machine room, you can see those telegrams running around the machine room.... .

And don't you love the way that when, you know who, loses it, changes the password on the old puter... .

Memories of long conversations with a guy named Joe Kuel (Cool).
Very slick speed control but I think I could have opened up an eprom store by the time we got done with that job.

Great find, Christy!

I get so used to hearing buzzing relays, I've probably walked past a bunch of them without thinking twice. Good work!

Just as the skip mysteriously disappeared three hours ago, it suddenly reappeared in the dark hoistway like something right out a Stephen King movie. On board were the same four behemoths as before. Bud said "Get on, time for lunch". The trip down was not the same as the trip up. To begin with, there was no room at the center this time and believe me, you didn’t want to grab on to one of the other guys. The first day on the job was not the time for lasting impressions. One of the guys had wrapped a length of rope around the rope falls four times and was holding each end. This was our descent velocity control. The less he pulled the ends, the faster we went. The harder he pulled, the slower we went. Pulling even harder caused us to stop. “Ok?” He said…and down we went… and fast. My first thought was "I'm going to die" but the other guys were looking at me and grinning….. It must be OKAY, I guess.

The Elevator Business is a hazardous business. I have and will continue to tell our humorous, everyday stories but due to the nature of the business, I must include the personal tragedies.

The ropes were smoking as we traveled down the hoistway at Mach 10. A new guy, Roy, panicked and grabbed the whizzing ropes with both hands. With five ropes traveling faster than we were and moving in opposite directions to boot, it was the fast thinking of the guy with the rope controlling our speed to stop the skip before any serious damage was done to Roy's hands.

Haughton had recently hired five new 50 per centers. These new guys, like me, were all about 20 years of age with the exception of Rob. He had at least 10 to 15 years on the rest of us and was no ball of fire but the guy tried as hard as he could. Bud treated this poor guy like a Galley Slave and was on his ass for anything and everything. Roy was also accident prone and had already emptied out two of our first aid kits and was always covered with band aids. Earlier in the job Roy had incorrectly grabbed a rail on the end while it was being hoisted into the hoistway. He had his hands underneath the end when the center of the rail wedged in the top of the entrance. Roy's hands were now wedged between the sharp end of the rail and the unfinished raked concrete floor. The rail kept moving, peeling his knuckles off. Roy's safety record on the job wasn't the greatest, but we do know he must have had a stellar safety record on the freeway. More than once he was spotted driving to and from the job in his green and white Nash Metropolitan wearing his hard hat at a rakish tilt. We all felt he should be in another line of work. As it turns out he had a close relative that was an elevator inspector.

Later in the job, the shop asked for a crew to do a small job in Bakersfield so Bud, gleefully, sent Rob and a mechanic, Carl, to do the job. Carl weighed in at around 300 hundred pounds and could only sit and wire controllers. We would all get a kick when he grabbed his leather belt with both hands and loop it up over his belly just like a lineman climbing a telephone pole.

Rob somehow made mechanic as a service man years later at an independent elevator company in LA. In the ‘80s he was answering an overtime call and while working on the broken elevator he made a serious mistake that cost him his life.

As the story goes, he answered a call on a duplex. He entered the pit of the running car without turning it off, then reached in between the counter weight rails of the running elevator to work on the adjacent car. The weights came down and severed his arm. He lay in the pit and bled to death long before a family member called the company and reported him missing. The company finally dispatched another mechanic to check on Rob, it was way too late.

when I worked at Millar we had a helper wiping machines down on an older Armor job with a TMS 900 overlay. The kid had put the car on what he thought was inspection. It was the old inspection knife switch on the Armor controller. Well that switch didn't work anymore and the dumb ass company that did the overlay didn't have the sense to either remove it or at least mark it as non functional. The kid got his hand sucked into the sheave and lost three fingers and severely crushed his hand. After many surgeries later the kid finally left the trade. It was a textbook example of the need to provide lock out tag out procedures. It is complacency that hurts and kills people. I love this forum because as I get older, I realize the stupid chances I use to take myself.

Wow....

great stories...

There was a short story in my career that could have had two endings. If it weren't for a very colorful mechanic, Kelly, it would have ended in the worst of the two possible scenarios. Kelly and I were realigning the targets for the counterweight rails at the end of travel on the 30th floor. We had a bridge plank across the hoistway. I stepped off the steel onto the plank to move the counterweight target, missed my mark and fell through the space alongside the plank. We had the skip tied off two floors below and that was it. There was nothing but air on all sides. I hit the beam in the back of the hoistway one floor below. I managed to grab that beam on the way down and landed on my right side. I was hanging on for life and drifting in and out of unconsciousness from the pain. Kelly slid down a main guide rail to where I was hanging on, grabbed me in a bear hug and held me up against the beam and told me a couple of jokes until I regained consciousness laughing. Kelly saved my life. There was nothing between “me and my maker” except Kelly.

I had a chance to work with several different mechanics while in and out of FOB. One in particular was Larry. He was a bull mechanic who was the terror of all helpers. He was a big guy with a barrel chest, deep loud voice and close-cropped hair. He was also a hell raiser who could hold his own with just about anybody. It was a very bad idea to cross Larry. When pissed, he could be like a rattlesnake with a case of hives. His dress for work was a little different than the rest of us; it consisted of a short sleeve sport shirt, grey levies and cowboy boots. Not exactly a poster child for OHSA.

This guy was a helper’s nightmare. He could pick up two counter weight rails, one in each hand and carry them a long distance over all types of terrain in order to get them to the hoistway, and that’s pushing over 200 pounds. The major rub here is that somebody had to be on the other end. That somebody was his helper big or small. He went through helpers like Imelda Marcos went through shoes. Today he might be known as, “The Helper Cookie Monster”.

He usually started traction jobs by installing the rails and pit equipment, hoisting the generators, machines and controllers and then pulling off. Thus he was called a “Bull Mechanic". That reference really pissed him off. He worked hard, drank hard and expected his helper to do likewise.

When we worked together at FOB we spent our time re-rigging skips and untangling the kinks in the manila rope in the pit so the skips could travel up and down without stopping. The kinks and tangles in the rope were known as "Assholes" in elevator talk. The jargon we used were terms such as "Down the Road" (fired, laid off or sent to the shop), "Grunt" (helper), “Pusher” (Foreman), "Can You Do it Boy?" (get with it) and "My Mothers Slow, But she's 80 Years Old" (hurry up). All these terms and some others I can’t recall were adopted by Elevator Constructors from High Lineman. By the way, the comeback to "Can You Do it Boy?" was, "With A Slop Jar Full Of N*!s And A Nine Inch C*!k. . .“And You Call Me Boy?"

I worked with Larry for a few months and we got along just fine. Sorry to say, some years later I heard he had moved to Denver, taken a job as a route mechanic, cleaned up his act and remarried. While on a service call, he picked the door lock and while stepping on the car top tripped and fell into the hoistway on the front of the elevator. The hoistway doors closed behind him, the car started up and crushed him to death.

The Katy Building was a modernization job in Downtown LA run by a very colorful old timer we called "Huck". Huck had been around for years and years and was a great wrench. There was a big difference working construction with guys like Bud and John to working an inside job with Huck. We had long coffee and lunch breaks and the job just seemed to drag on. We just seemed to work around the edges of the work, rather than in the center. It was a little here, a little there. The jobs he ran always seemed like they would never end and run way over. When the job was finished, the adjusters were in and out and the service guy got a job with few if any headaches.

Due to his age, the company tried to give Huck inside jobs. There was a minor rub; he couldn’t keep his mouth shut in front of the customer. More than a few times he was on the carpet in front of the service manager. A note here… in those days the service department ran the modernization jobs. Construction got them if the rails were replaced.

The Katy building had four gearless elevators installed by Llewellyn in the 20’s. Otis later came along and modernized it again in the 50’s. Our job was to install new controllers, replace the air doors with new door equipment. That meant the female elevator operators would soon be out of a job. It was touch and go for a while but we all became friends. So friendly in fact, that when passenger traffic was slow this good looking operator with great legs, would take her break and stand in the elevator opening while straddling the gap between the car and hall.

For some reasons we could always find something to do directly beneath her in the walk-in pit.

I was there to help distribute the new door equipment and hoist the new controllers into the machine room. Huck and his helper also needed a hand with some other work. We needed to replace the existing hitch plates on top of the cars with a Haughton hitch plate that contained load-weighing contacts. Before we started, the car top and hoistway had to be cleaned up.

The hoistway and car was covered with years and years of oily fuzz. Huck decided to use a Cadillac blower in lieu of a vacuum. These old Cadillac blowers put out such a blast of air, NASA could have used them to test the aerodynamics of the space shuttle. We started at the top of the hoistway working our way down blowing off the fuzz and hoping we would sweep it up in the pit when finished.

This plan had one very serious flaw. The older cabs had very large exhaust fans mounted on top of the elevator. Boy, those things really put out a bunch of air or did they? Elevator fans are supposed to blow, but these guys sucked and I mean really sucked. It was just before lunch and a hot summer day. The elevators were packed with executives heading out for their two-martini lunch. We were unaware that the car-top fans changed the scene in the lobby to that of a change of shift at a West Virginia coal mine. Believe it or not, this day wasn’t over yet. We just kept working as usual, after cleaning the hoistway, it was time to clean the pit but there wasn't the amount of fuzz we expected. Why…? The “fuzz” left the building with the white-shirted office workers right onto 5th street. That’s right…they were covered with soot. It would take awhile for the office to get wind of this fiasco.

We hung the car, secured the hoist ropes and started removing the old hitch plate. Problem was, we couldn't break a bolt loose so a trip to the shack to retrieve the cutting torch was necessary. It was right after lunch and the part-time coal miners were returning to work. The cars in the adjacent hoistways were zipping by us non-stop. While cutting off the bolt, a piece of red hot slag ignited the oily fuzzy stuff on the side of a running car in the next hoistway. Damn, we had this blazing box of people rushing by us up and down at 500 feet per minute. Not a problem! Huck was always very safety conscious, so conscious he kept the fire extinguisher locked up in the shack so no one would steal it. I headed for the shack, Huck and his helper swatted, blew, threw coffee, spit and would have probably pissed on the traveling fireball if they could. We got the fire out and later that day Huck assumed his usual position on the carpet in the Service Manager’s office.

Jim
The funny thing of your story for me was the part about the suits getting dirty! It seems Huck could bring some excitement to the table too.

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Wish we had video cameras then

More Huck,

Huck’s helper on the Katy Building was a Guy named Kelly. This Kelly was not the “The Famous Kelly” mentioned later in this book, so we called him “Little Kelly”. Kelly was kind of a flighty guy but a good helper nonetheless. One day while working in the hoistway he inadvertently let his leg hang over into the adjacent hoistway. The car that lived in that hoistway whizzed by at 500 feet per minute and broke Kelly’s leg in a zillion pieces. It must have hurt like hell but he managed to crawl out onto the lobby. Writhing in pain with tears running down his face he called for Huck who finally saundered up, called Kelly a Pussy and told him to get up and shake it off. Huck tried to get him to go for coffee in the shack, all the while telling Kelly he’ll get over it in a few minutes. Eventually after about 45 minutes Huck relented to calling an ambulance. Huck was right-on all right... Kelly did shake it off… after a week in the hospital and three months on crutches.

One story from uk. Hydraulic lift broke down maintenance guy (not elevator) went to motor room he knew how lo lower lift down pressed lowering button but nothing happened ie took all pressure off.
Elevator man arrived assessed problem to be safety gear come in and decided (why?) to get under car and release it???? Obviously when he did lift fell on top of hime taking his head off
Dont try this at home folks!!

Ray h I work in the uk and have not come across this story before, did you research it? I would be interested in the details.

Gib

I was at Otis in Seattle when this happened, I was a Canuck that came down to work for about 8 yrs. Knew the Super and his Son well. The old Scotchman father defended his son well, it happened at one of my accounts. I was sent in after the event to cool things down. It had happened on the freight elevator.

We used to have beers at a joint up on Sunset Boulevard which was a block away from the shop. You could bank on most of the Haughton crew being in there on payday. One payday it was business as usual. We were drinking beer, telling lies, pounding our chests and playing the bowling machine. Bob and another mechanic were bowling on the machine when a Haughton truck driver picked up a ball, tossed it down the lane and spoiled the score for Bob and the other guy. The guy thought it was pretty funny. Bob politely asked him to knock it off. The driver didn't know whom he was dealing with. Well he did it again. "Bad Idea"… Bob just picked him up and tossed him down the alley with such force that he wedged in the back of the machine. It took three of us to get him out of the inside of the machine. It was a strike!

It was hard to imagine that during the Korean War at the Chosen Reservoir on a freezing December night in 1950 this quiet man, burned out three barrels of his Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). This action along with other feats of valor won "Bob" a Silver Star, Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Bob always said he would go out "With Fire Coming out Of My Asshole".

He did "Just That" when later in his career his luck ran out. On a high rise job in Los Angeles Bob and his helper were working on a newer skip that Haughton was using. These skips had no safeties and were powered by small winding drum machines mounted at the bottom landing. The skips used a 3/8 inch steel cable fed threw a block in the overhead and back down to the skip. The guys on the skip controlled it with a pendant station on a cable connected to the drum machine. No one was watching it while Bob and his helper were working ten floors up the hoistway. The cable wound off the drum and broke. Bob and his helper were in a ten floor freefall. While falling down the hoistway Bob made sure his helper was laying flat on the skip to minimize his injuries. The skip hit the two to one sheave on the car frame sitting in the pit. Because the skip hit the sheave first, it broke in half and cushioned the fall. The helper stayed on the skip and was not seriously hurt, Bob on the other hand, didn't fare so well, he was still on his feet during the impact.

The impact threw him off the skip into the hoistway where he was wedged between the hoistway wall and the platform in the pit. Bob’s recovery was a long ordeal. He couldn't walk for months. I and "Dirty John" paid him a visit and watched him get up unassisted and go to the bathroom for the first time since the accident. A year later Bob returned to work. Luck just wasn't on his side when a Skill saw got away from him and ran across his arm. It took extensive surgery and rehabilitation before he could get back to work. Bob passed away a few years later. We lost a great comrade and hero. There are not enough and never will be enough men like Bob.

Another great read Jim-thanks for posting

Happy Ending?

Working for DJ as Grunt was like working for a favorite Uncle. You were pretty much on your own if you saw it needed to be done and did it, everything was cool. There was a good side and a down side to this work ethic. A few mistakes were made; on one job we painted all the governors. Why? They didn't match the rest of the machine equipment that had already been painted. Hey! They really looked great, but there was one major rub. The adjusters had already calibrated them in preparation for the safety tests that were to be held the next day. Our paint job was very through and pretty but unfortunately the safety tests had to be canceled. A note here, elevator guys don’t really use strokes to apply the paint, it’s more like a dip and stab action. I really believe there is equipment that I painted in the 60’s that hasn’t dried yet.

DJ was not only a great guy to work for, but also a lot of fun. He watched out for his people. One of the best examples I can remember was when a helper charged into the shack with tears in his eyes. This helper had been around for some time, a big tough guy and definitely not subject to turning on the water works. As the story goes, the helper was installing gutter cover in one of the machine rooms when he dropped a screw into a running gearless machine. This machine belonged to an elevator that had just been turned over and was in service. The screw hit the machine, bounced into the space between the field pieces and the armature, sparks flew, the DC overload tripped and the elevator ground to a halt. Fortunately the elevator was un-occupied. DJ handed him a rag from the rag box so he could wipe his eyes and proceeded to settle him down. “Don’t sweat it, we’ll figure something out.” Together they headed for the machine room to assess the damage. The helper had a reason to be crying. The machine was trashed and would have to be disassembled, the damaged field pieces and armature replaced. No easy task for this was a Big Ass Haughton #40 Machine that weighed in at around 12000 pounds. Being the clever guy that DJ was, he looked at the damage and within seconds came up with a solution to this dilemma. There was an air conditioning duct that ran right over the top of the machine. He removed one of the screws from the duct, looked at it and said. “That’s the son-of-bitch right here that screwed up our machine.” The screw was a pretty good match and became a perfect match after a couple of blows with a single jack. Right or wrong the sheet metal contractor’s insurance company footed the bill for the repair job.

LOL!!! And I wonder why the other trades hate us

The tragic fatal accident in the Philly area last weekend has had a powerful impact on all of us here. Please keep your mind on what you are doing at all times. AND PLEASE WORK SAFE!

Any updates on the 2012 death count for our brothers and sisters?
I heard of one recent and heard up to 6 so far,but all that is hearsay.

The more the companies push us,the the closer we come to killing our selves.
No job,no matter how important,is not worth your family and friends not having you around anymore.