DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 11:08 p.m. December 07, 2008
SPOTLIGHT: WATCHING OUT FOR YOUR SAFETY AND POCKETBOOK
Escalators’ hidden dangers
Sunday, December 07, 2008
As little Caprice Robinson stepped onto the escalator at the Kensington MARTA station east of Decatur this summer, she gripped her mom’s hand, as she had many times before. Within seconds, Caprice, then almost 3 years old, began screaming in pain.
The spongy pink shoe on her right foot, a knock-off of the popular Crocs, was being sucked into the gap at the side of the moving metal stairs, records show. They rode nearly to the bottom, screaming for help, before the escalator stopped. Fire Department rescuers had to pry the metal stairs apart to release Caprice’s mangled foot.
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Examples of injuries
Escalators injure people in many ways. Here are some examples from records filed with Georgia regulators:
* A 17-year-old boy's right hand was "bleeding profusely" after it briefly got stuck in an escalator at MARTA's Lenox station in February. He had reached down to pick up a fare card that fell out of his pocket. "That's when my right hand got caught in the escalator," he told investigators.
* A woman from Cumming fell while looking after her luggage on an airport escalator in January, cutting her ear, which was bleeding significantly. She was taken to a hospital.
* A 77-year-old man, who walks with a cane, suffered a laceration to the back of his head in April when he lost his balance on an escalator at the Dillard's store at Perimeter Mall, fell backward and struck his head on the escalator step.
* An Atlanta woman's trench coat got stuck in an escalator in January at MARTA's Dunwoody station, pulling her down to the ground and popping her shoulder out of place, records say. She was taken to a hospital.
* A child's Crocs shoe became trapped between two escalator steps in May at the Renaissance Waverly Hotel. The child was able to get his foot out in time and only suffered a small bruise.
* A Douglasville woman, who was walking up an escalator at MARTA's Five Points station in May, lost her footing and suffered a deep gash to the center of her knee. She was taken to a hospital for treatment.
* A Powder Springs man was found by airport staff sitting in a chair with blood all over him after he tripped in June. Paramedics cleaned and bandaged wounds to his left temple, left forearm and right shin.
Ride Safely
* Keep feet away from the sides of steps where entrapment can occur.
* Learn the location of escalators' emergency shut-off buttons in case you need to stop the machine in an emergency. They're usually at each end of an escalator.
* Do not bring strollers, walkers or carts onto escalators. Use elevators instead.
* Make sure shoes are tied and that clothing doesn't drag onto escalator stairs.
* Always hold children's hands and do not allow them to sit or play on escalators.
* Face forward and keep a firm grip on the handrail.
Report Injuries
* U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/incident.aspx or call 1-800-638-2772.
Several times a week people are injured on metro Atlanta escalators, reports to Georgia regulators show.
While only a handful of local cases each year involve disfiguring entrapments such as what happened to Caprice, dozens of metro Atlanta escalator riders suffer serious injuries when they fall on the machinery or get cut on sharp edges, or when their clothing or luggage becomes entangled.
“Most of it is actually rider-related. There’s not much equipment failure at all,” said Earl Everett, director of safety engineering at the Georgia Department of Labor, which licenses and inspects escalators and moving walkways.
But just because an escalator is working the way it’s designed doesn’t make it safe. “You’re on a piece of moving machinery,” Everett said, and that requires riders to pay attention.
Some safety advocates say escalators are inherently dangerous and question the blame recently heaped on Crocs-type shoes, which several children were wearing in highly publicized accidents across the country, including at Atlanta’s airport.
“If escalators were designed properly and met all the standards, it wouldn’t matter that they were wearing Crocs,” said Scott Anderson, a Houston petroleum engineer who petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1997 to require closing dangerous gaps along the sides of escalator stairs.
In 1996 — long before Crocs were on the market — Anderson’s 4-year-old son lost three toes when his tennis shoe was sucked into an escalator.
Across the nation, the CPSC estimates, nearly 11,000 people were treated in hospitals last year for injuries involving escalators, mostly falls. Escalators carry about 90 billion riders a year, the agency estimates.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined more then 140 injury incident reports filed with state regulators by operators of Atlanta-area escalators during the first eight months of this year. Most of the reports were filed by entities with large numbers of escalators and riders: Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, MARTA and stores at shopping malls.
The vast majority involved adults falling after misjudging steps, becoming distracted, losing their balance or tripping. Some just got scrapes. But in many cases, riders had gashes that bled, knees and elbows that swelled and other such injuries requiring medical treatment. At least 23 people suffered head injuries during reported falls on escalators, records show.
In May, a young girl required 12 stitches to close a gash in her left hand after the back of her dress got caught in a convention center escalator adjacent to the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in College Park, records show.
At least seven incidents involved feet becoming entrapped in an escalators’ machinery. Reports show all but two involved children who, like Caprice, were wearing Crocs or similar shoes.
Caprice was left with a nub where her pinky toe should be and required surgery to reattach skin that was peeled off her foot in the July 15 accident. It’s unclear whether she’ll need more surgery as her foot grows, said Roger Orlando, a Decatur lawyer representing Caprice and her mother, Djaarra Griffin of Stone Mountain.
Griffin said she and Caprice haven’t ridden an escalator since the accident, which occurred around 7 a.m. as mother and daughter made their regular hourlong commute by bus and train to her job as a day care worker. “I use the elevator,” she said.
MARTA officials declined to comment on the accident. They said the escalator had gap-reducing side plates and brushes to keep feet away from the sides.
In May, the CPSC warned of the risk of “popular soft-sided flexible clogs and slides” on escalators, saying they were involved in all but two of 77 foot entrapment incidents the agency was aware of since January 2006. In July, Crocs Inc. announced plans to put escalator safety messages on tags on its footwear.
In recent months, workers at the airport and MARTA have begun spraying friction-reducing silicone on the sides of escalators to reduce entrapments.
Although it’s rare, entrapment often results in severe injuries and amputations. The CPSC has twice denied formal citizen petitions to require design changes to make escalators safer: a 1978 petition by an Ohio nun after a 4-year-old relative’s foot was crushed and Anderson’s 1997 petition.
Anderson’s petition prompted the escalator industry to create voluntary standards for reducing the size of the gap and the amount of friction along the sides of escalator steps. These measures have become part of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ escalator standards — as well as many enforceable building codes across the country, including in Georgia.
In denying Anderson’s petition in 2000, the CPSC said the industry’s new standards “will adequately reduce the risk of sidewall entrapment injury” and it would monitor their effectiveness.
Eight years later, the CPSC has not evaluated whether the standard is working. Agency spokesman Scott Wolfson said the agency believes recent entrapments are due to the soft-sided shoes and is hopeful public awareness will reduce future injuries.
Officials with the National Elevator Industry Inc., an escalator trade group, in a written statement said their devices are “inherently safe” and that injuries are rare compared with the number of riders.
MARTA officials said the Kensington escalator involved in Caprice’s accident, because it was built in 1993, doesn’t have to meet the gap/friction performance standards until 2010. Only escalators built since 2000 currently have to meet the standard in Georgia.
Even on newer escalators, state escalator inspectors don’t do the gap/friction test themselves, a process that takes about an hour and involves a tool regulators don’t own. They rely on escalator owners to test and certify their machines are in compliance, Everett said.
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