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".
