This one’s making the rounds this week. Originally uncovered by NYC The Blog, this four-minute video condenses a Friday night ordeal in an elevator at the 181st St. station along the 1. The blog’s author summarizes:
On April 8, an elevator inside the 1 line station at 181st Street stopped working with 28 people inside, including an MTA assistant who was operating it. Isabella, a 35-year-old neighborhood resident who didn’t want her last name used, was inside when the elevator failed. It’s not clear if this elevator was one of new ones reportedly installed at that station in 1999.
It was hot and crazy when the unit failed, Isabella told NYC The Blog in an email, and hard to breathe. One of those trapped was a young girl who had asthma. “She was scared,” Isabella wrote, and had a “hysterical attack.” The MTA employee present called 911 “several times” but otherwise was just as helpless as the others. Some passed the time with friendly conversation. “What’s your favorite song,” one asked. Others fanned the young girl to keep help keep her cool.
The FDNY arrived to help extract the trapped commuters about an hour later. “I need the young and the old,” a firefighter told the crowd after he opened a hatch on the elevator’s roof. Trapped passengers were placed in another elevator and lifted out. Still inside the broken elevator, Isabella panned her camera around as people said hi. At least one said hello to YouTube, a sly acknowledgment that the video would likely end up there.
The MTA said they tested the elevator for 24 hours before putting it back into service yesterday morning, but some of those who were stuck vowed to find a better way home. “Why are no there stairs in the whole station?” Isabella said to NYC The Blog. “Where are the emergency exits? What could happened if the electricity didn’t work, how would all the people get out from underground?”
I’ve always been reticent about taking the MTA elevators. I’m always wary about the ones at Clark and Court Sts. in Brooklyn, and if I’m using the Court St. station, I’ll usually take the sketchy staircase instead of the sketchy elevator. It’s the lesser of two evils.
14 comments
My worst nightmare. You couldn’t pay me enough to live near that station!
Agreed. I’m a pretty rational guy, but just the chance of this happening makes me fearful of that station.
I’ve definitely seen at least one emergency exit at 181st Street, tucked away in a corner somewhere. It’s not very obvious. Of course, I don’t know whether it has stairs (I suspect so) or whether it would be sufficient in case of emergency (I suspect not).
There are four elevators in that station and at 168th and at 191st Streets, so they should be able to rotate the one that gets taken out of service for PM. What good would stairs do except for provide people another quiet place to live in the subway system?
“What good would stairs do except for provide people another quiet place to live in the subway system?”
Maybe a nice place to take a pee or deficate, as they do on the ramps at Herald Square?
What I don’t understand is that with today’s technology, why is it when people are stuck in an MTA Elevator, tunnel or along the Rockaway line during the blizzard, why is the minimum wait for rescue one hour, with waiting times of up to 7 hours? I really can’t understand why in most of these situations, help can’t arrive within ten minutes and all people out within 30 minutes? If that girl had died from an asthma attack, it would have been very unfortunate, not to mention the multi-million dollar lawsuit we’d all have to pay for.
Isn’t the FDNY standard for arrival at emergencies three minutes?
I would imagine the FDNY got there pretty fast. But you don’t just tie a rope around the skinniest firefighter on hand and throw him down the shaft. There’s a reason these stations have elevators: they are WAY BELOW street level, which means you have to set up your gear, make a plan, and slowly lower your best guy down a l-o-n-g dark elevator shaft. Real life isn’t like a “Die Hard” movie. Slow and steady wins the day.
And while being stuck on train or elevator is inconvenient it’s not a threat to life, safety or property. In other words it’s not an emergency.
Thankfully, the lights in the elevator stayed on. It could have been much worse and more uncomfortable.
I’ve always been a great believer in stairs – always use the stairs. Every station should have proper stairways that are kept clean, lighted and repaired and open at all times. I would never use a subway elevator. Besides,climbing stairs is a great exercise – one of the best.
I’ve heard there will be no actual stairways at the #7 Javits Center terminal. Bad idea.
Where did you hear that. Will there be escalators?
No stairs at all there?! That sounds like a bad idea.
In London, many of the stations are the sort that you /want/ to take the elevator, but stairs are clearly present, with nice warnings like “Stairs – 180 steps.” Not something you’d ordinarily take, unless you despise elevators, but clearly an option.
I would not take stairs unless they were the straight in-line version. But if you are going to do that, why not put an escalator in. Deep stairwells if they were not a straight shot would require landings with blind corners. Now who the hell wants create more blind spots in this system?
If the MTA cannot make straight shot stairs/escalators work, high capacity elevators with cameras and/or an attendant will have to suffice.
The other problem was that the elevator’s ventilation units weren’t working either. Being stuck is one thing. Being stuck in cube with no moving air is quite claustrophobic.