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Woman falls down elevator shaft at Fenway Park

A woman fell two floors down an elevator shaft at Fenway Park when the doors unexpectedly opened even though the elevator wasn't there, around 11:20 p.m., the Boston Fire Department reports.

The woman wound up lying on the top of the elevator, unconscious.

Firefighters got into the elevator, used a chair to help them climb through its ceiling hatch aand pit the woman, 22, on a backboard.

They then lowered her through the hatch and handed her off to EMTs for treatment and then transport to a local hospital.

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Comments

… I'm going to guess that, as they euphemistically say in the reports, "Alcohol may have been involved."

Still, that's a harsh lesson to learn about looking through doorways before you walk through them.

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should be allowed to serve alcohol beyond the 7th inning.

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Cellphone induced robotic behavior...

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when the doors unexpectedly opened even though the elevator wasn't there,

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I always jump right in because I always want to be the first one in. I sometimes do this without looking to see if the elevator cab is there

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If you're mid-conversation, you may just have looked long enough to see the doors had opened and then continued to look at the person you're talking to as you attempt to walk in.

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But damn... that's horrifying.

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Actually Adam, that should be 'Treatment and transport to a local hospital'. Kind of made it sound like they just drove her there. I say this only because a large population of the public think of EMT's and Paramedics as 'Ambulance Drivers', as you know, they are not.

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Updated the original post to reflect that.

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Another more tragic tragedy,

A look inside the September 11 Memorial Museum

http://nypost.com/2014/05/14/a-look-inside-the-september-11-memorial-mus...

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doors do not open unless the cab is on the floor. Elevator cabs do not move until the doors are closed and latched. That's why you don't read about this happening more often.
That being said, you can open elevator doors from the floor if you know what you are doing and you have a special tool.

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The elevator hoistway doors has a interlock this a mechanical lock if it was broken, inside the interlock the electrical contacts will still make the safety circuit, this will allow the elevator to move to another floor. I have seen this happen before, and then some one has to push on the histway doors and it will open.

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What you're saying is possible, and I've also seen it happen on very old, poorly maintained elevators. However the scenario requires both the mechanical door lock and its electrical safety switch to both be malfunctioning. The purpose of the switch being, to keep the elevator from leaving any floor unless the outside hoistway doors are fully closed and locked. When such interlock switches fail, the failure usually shows the door open rather than closed. (unless some unscrupulous "repairman" deliberately bypassed the switch)

In addition to that, someone would have to deliberately and forcefully push open the hoistway doors, which have their own spring-loaded closer. In normal operation, the motor-driven operator mounted on top of the elevator cab unlocks and opens the adjacent hoistway doors along with the interior cab doors.

In other words, the hoistway doors can't just open on their own unless the elevator cab is within just a few inches of that floor level. (unless perhaps, it really is a very old, poorly-maintained elevator)

Does anyone know what kind of elevator was involved in this accident? i.e.: Is it a modern automatic passenger elevator, or an old-fashioned freight elevator?

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Judging by this photo from WHDH, it appears to be a standard passenger elevator.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1.0-9/10390223_1...

Update: Gate B passenger elevator: http://www.wcvb.com/news/woman-falls-down-fenway-park-elevator-shaft/260...

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The passenger elevator that serves the outfield grandstand and the Budweiser deck was installed in 2006, as I recall.

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It doesn't matter if she was drunk, sober, texting, distracted by something else, or not. The doors are simply never supposed to open if the cab is not at the floor. This is a mechanical failure that resulted in injury. Schindler should have to answer to the safety of their elevators and be liable for her medical bills.

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Schindler should be liable if a door is wrenched open? It's easy to open a set of doors if you have an inkling of experience with engineering or work it construction.

I can't see how Schindler has liability in that situation.

(Deliberately making it a hypothetical because the facts of this incident are unknown.)

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I fail to see how "doors unexpectedly opened" means "manipulated an interlock and wrenched open the doors."

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.

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