Elevators revolutionized housing and ushered in the era of the skyscraper. But even though
they've been an integral part of plenty of progress, when things with an elevator go
wrong, the only place to go is down. These are the world's deadliest elevators.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, and two of them
were flown directly into the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center. If you
were alive at the time, you surely remember exactly where you were when it happened. Around
200 to 400 deaths were estimated to have occurred in the two buildings' 198 high-speed elevators,
some stretching from the ground floor all the way to the 110th floor. Many elevator
shafts were damaged by the initial impacts, and experts have determined that many of the
elevator-related deaths that day probably occurred at that time.
Some people were trapped in elevator cars that stopped working when they were damaged.
For those unfortunate souls, they either had to wait until the buildings collapsed entirely
or until the fires got to them. Experts later determined that the elevator shafts aided
the fires in spreading, as a big elevator shaft is a perfect chimney for drafts that
can make fire spread quickly through a large skyscraper. Approximately 100 people actually
managed to escape from the elevators on that day. One of them, Christopher Young, spoke
on the PBS series Nova about his experience. His was an especially close call, as the North
Tower began to collapse one minute after he stepped out of the elevator.
"It's almost overwhelming how profoundly the world changed in the time that I was in that
elevator."
About 112 miles southwest of Johannesburg, South Africa lies the small town of Orkney.
It doesn't have a lot of residents, but it does have a huge gold mine known as Vaal Reefs,
which is the site of one of the deadliest elevator accidents in history. On May 10,
1995, a train used to transport materials to and from the mine went off track, smashed
through a safety barrier, and sped right toward an open mine shaft. Investigators later found
that the mine had no safety devices in place to prevent trains from falling into the shafts.
Furthermore, the hook attaching the train car to the rest of the train opened, causing
the train to free fall into the shaft.
After falling 1,700 feet, the train collided with a large elevator cage designed to carry
around 100 people down the mine shaft. Then both the train and elevator car tumbled nearly
half a mile to the ground. The personnel elevator car, normally two stories tall, had been crushed
down to a single story. It was filled with workers at the time of the crash. All 104
people on board the elevator were killed in the accident, although 400 workers working
at the bottom of the shaft were evacuated safely.
About 50 miles south of the Vaal Reefs mine is the town of Welkom, which is also known
for its gold mining. With gold mining, as in most forms of mining, elevator accidents
aren't actually common enough to be a major concern. But what is a major concern is the
buildup of potentially toxic or explosive gasses.
On August 31, 1987 at Welkom's St. Helena gold mine, an explosion from just such a buildup
ripped through a part of the mine, killing 10 workers. This was caused by a buildup of
methane gas, which is highly explosive. The explosion also severed the cable of a mining
elevator. The elevator car was sent plummeting down a 4,521-foot pit. Afterward, it was estimated
that the car fell about 1.4 kilometers, or nearly a mile, to the ground. All 52 workers
on the elevator were killed, bringing the death toll to 62.
300 workers working down the shaft managed to escape, including one person dubbed the
"solitary rescuer," who managed to save several injured workers while hanging from a rope.
This person's name isn't in any official sources, but he was awarded a well-earned medal for
bravery.
In March 2016 in Xi'an, China, a group of elevator maintenance workers at an apartment
complex returned from Chinese New Year, the biggest holiday of the year in the country.
It's not uncommon for people to take off weeks, or in this case an entire month, to celebrate.
Before leaving for the holiday, the workers discovered that one of the elevators was broken,
so they took it out of service and brought it to the first floor, intending to work on
it after they returned. But when they came back and examined the elevator, they discovered
something terrifying: they had mistakenly trapped a woman inside when they took the
machine out of service.
Although property managers said that the maintenance team had confirmed the elevator was empty
before shutting it down, it appears that this didn't actually happen. The woman had been
stuck in the elevator the entire time and had starved to death as a result. When her
body was found, her hands were badly injured, as it appeared that she had spent some of
her time trying as hard as she could to pry the elevator doors open in a desperate bid
for survival.
Construction accidents are no joke, and many of them are preventable by following safety
instructions. Over the last few decades, China's record in this regard has been less-than-stellar.
On September 13, 2012 at a construction site in Wuhan, witnesses claimed that they saw
a construction elevator loaded with workers rise very quickly to the building's top, followed
by the cable snapping and the elevator car falling all the way back down. It dropped
30 stories to the ground, killing all 19 people on board. In the aftermath, investigators
found that the registration plate on the elevator was still readable. The registration had expired
three months before and was rated for a capacity of only 12 people.
Local authorities immediately halted all construction in the province to perform safety checks.
Despite those measures, construction continues to be the deadliest job in Chin. And there
are signs that it's only getting more dangerous as the country seeks further rapid urbanization,
according to data from China's Ministry of Emergency Management.
Mining is already plenty dangerous on its own. Equipment malfunctions, such as elevator
accidents, are another issue entirely. On October 10, 1932, England had one of its worst
mining accidents, later dubbed the Lancashire Pit Disaster. Electric elevators were available
at the time, but since running electricity to mines wasn't yet terribly common, miners
relied on elevators powered by steam engines, such as the one in Bickershaw Colliery, a
coal mine in Lancashire.
When a safety device called the "visor," designed to prevent the elevator's engine from winding
the rope too tightly, malfunctioned in shaft number three, the rope tightened until it
snapped. That sent an elevator with 20 men plummeting into the 14 feet of water collected
at the bottom of the shaft. Because the elevator was designed as a cage, the workers were unable
to escape and drowned, except for one man, who happened to be close enough to the gate
that he lifted it open and swam to safety.
While any type of elevator can theoretically be the site of an accident, there are certain
designs that are especially terrifying. One of them is called the paternoster, which is
based on the Latin for "our father" due to its resemblance to a string of rosary beads.
They're inherently dangerous for people who don't know how to use them properly, which
is why so few of them exist today. They can still be found in a few places in Europe,
and you can even find videos of people riding in them. To picture one, imagine a regular
elevator but instead of a car with doors that close, it's a series of open, continuously
moving booths, one side up and one side down.
"It's never just a step on, and step off. It's always a bit of a jump."
"There's always a fear that you're gonna fall through the gap."
"Yeah."
There's no button, you simply step into the phone booth-sized box. When you get to your
destination floor, you step back out of the booth. Meanwhile, the interior elevator wall
is visible the entire time. The potential problem is that getting into a booth too early
means you might fall. And getting out too late can lead to serious injury, as body parts,
or entire bodies, can and have gotten caught between the moving booth and the floor or
ceiling outside. These elevators are so unsafe that Europe has actually passed laws banning
the construction of new paternosters.
"Sometimes you kind of lose your nerve and step back."
You might think that as the decades rolled by, mining elevators would start to rely less
on steam. But that wasn't exactly the case. On July 30, 1973, one particular steam elevator
experienced an overwind that sent people falling to the bottom of a pit. At the Markham Colliery
coal mine near Chesterfield, England, an elevator cage carrying 30 workers fell 1,329 feet.
Some of the workers on board survived, though 13 men died at the scene, and another five
died later at the hospital for a total of 18 fatalities. The surviving workers in the
cage didn't get off easy, though, as they and one rescue worker were seriously injured.
The elevator operator was reported to have gone into shock after the accident, even though
he was very experienced in running such equipment.
Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the elevator had 14 separate failsafe
mechanisms that were supposed to make a crash like this impossible. But somehow each of
the failsafes failed. The incident triggered a complete safety review of the coal mining
industry in England, something that had actually been proposed by the Yorkshire Divisional
Inspector of Mines and Quarries just days before the Markham Colliery accident.
Chinese construction site safety standards have a reputation for being called into question,
as the focus is more on getting things made cheaply and quickly rather than minimizing
casualties. This is particularly clear in an incident that occurred in Fujian Province
on October 30, 2008. At 6:40 am that morning, an elevator at the work site for a residential
building collapsed and killed a dozen workers.
Despite being one of the deadliest elevator accidents in history, this story barely got
a mention in most news outlets. The few that did report on it made it a point to add a
few lines noting that Chinese safety standards are woefully lax. It's actually pretty difficult
to find more information about the accident because Western news agencies were given only
the bare minimum of information by Chinese authorities. Thus, we simply don't know what
caused the elevator to fall. It's also worth noting that in the very same week, another
accident occurred at a construction site in Chongqing at which 11 people died and another
12 were injured when a crane collapsed.
One exception to the insufficiency of Chinese safety regulations is the construction in
Hong Kong prior to its 1997 repatriation to China. Among many differences between British
and Chinese rule was the fact safety standards were at least somewhat higher at the time.
But that doesn't mean that Hong Kong hasn't seen its own share of accidents.
On June 3, 1993, for example, an elevator collapsed at a Hong Kong work site, falling
17 stories and killing 12 workers, one of whom was only 16 years old and working while
on holiday from school. What's unique about this particular crash is how the elevator
operated. Instead of cables, it used a series of gears whose teeth hooked into a vertical
rail built into the building.
It turned out that the elevator, which was rated to carry only eight people, had been
overloaded, causing the mechanism to fail. While a safety brake was supposed to engage
to prevent a complete drop, this also failed. Some of the workers were actually still alive
at the bottom of the shaft, and firefighters rescued them using a specialized set of cutting
tools that they coincidentally had only just received two days earlier. Sadly, though,
these survivors later died at the hospital.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.