Woman ‘swallowed’ by faulty escalator in China

A 30 year old mother and her son were on an escalator going up in a shopping mall when the floor plate at the top of the escalator collapsed. The mother managed to push her three year-old son to safety, but she did not manage to save herself as she was being ‘swallowed’ by the escalator in the blink of an eye.

Two female sales assistants at the top of the escalator, apparently waiting for the mother and son, tried to save Ms Xiang by pulling on her arms, but failed to do so.

Her body was found hours later after the firefighters spent more than 4 hours to cut open the escalator steps to retrieve her body, however, her body was beyond recognition.

Wuhan Evening Daily said that maintenance had just been carried out on the escalator, and workers had forgotten to screw the plate back into place.

Ke Qingjie, a relative of the victim, told The Paper that Ms Xiang was warned that the escalator was faulty by the sales assistants only when she was halfway up.

I personally think that there should be signs at the top and bottom of the escalator to state that the escalator was under repair, so that shoppers would not take the escalator and realise when it’s too late. Hopefully, everyone would be more cautious to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

The link below is the CCTV footage of the incident:

http://video.sina.com.cn/view/249692297.html

Chevonne (3J)