China calls for elevator safety

A series of elevator accidents are causing a stir. A woman fell to her death in an elevator mishap on Saturday at a mall in Shanghai. She was believed to have stepped into an elevator shaft by mistake and fell from the sixth floor.

Some witnesses said there were no barriers or warnings around the open elevator, which was being repaired at the time. The case has dragged up a recent tragedy at a construction site in Wuhan, Hubei province, where nineteen workers died after the elevator they were using fell 100 meters to the ground.

Nineteen lives. That is all the victims of the elevator tragedy on September 13th. The names include four couples. This means their children have been left behind as orphans.

Zhou Hongfu and Ming Chunmei is one of the couples who have been working on the construction for only two months. They were saving money for their two children, one 16 and the other only 6 years old.

The half-built house stands as a reminder of the family’s tragic story.

A malfunction reportedly occurred as the elevator was going up and began to accelerate. When it reached the top 34th floor, the steel cables broke, dropping the car in free fall. Firefighters rushed to the scene and spent two hours pulling out all the workers from the wreck. But none survived.

Questions are flooding the investigation.

A registration card was found at the construction site - a certificate by the local government approving use of hoisting machinery. The expiry date was in June, but the accident happened in September.

The maximum capacity of the elevator is 12 people, but it was loaded with nineteen.

According to one construction worker, the elevator should have been operated by a professional. But when the accident occured, there was no one to be seen.

Chen Yong, a construction worker, says, "The operator wasn’t on duty that day, so they went up by themselves. There are no regulations in the company to forbid us from operating equipment. So sometimes we go up by ourselves to do more work and make more money."

One insider said the steel cables will normally stop the car from falling in case of an emergency. But this time, it failed.

A worker says, "We heard a loud noise when the car dropped on the ground."

The investigation is still underway, no final result has been released so far.

Many are calling for more enforcement on safety laws and supervision of work conditions.

The rapid economic growth in China, in combination with poor safety measures, frequently result in deadly industrial accidents.