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.