Moscow Metro Escalator Accident ( 1982 )

The Triangle was undoubtedly one of the most tragic events in the worlds history. The not only is the fire a horrifying event, but the factory had no safety precautions and didn’t have any emergency exits and kept doors locked. Not only did this strike sorrow on the community, but it awakened people to realize that workplace safety is a serious thing and needs to be practiced.

“The threat of blood on the tracks has become constant as the number of passengers surges to a level unseen since 1948”, Andrea Peyser writes in “Subways are New York’s Biggest Deathtrap”. The New York Post reported several subway incidents happened in the past weeks: a man in a wheelchair fell onto the tracks and was struck by a train in Brooklyn (Moore), a woman was shoved onto the tracks and killed by a train in Times Square (Furfaro), a man was pushed onto the tracks and injured (Moore), and a teenage boy found dead on the tracks in Bronx (Prendergast). These alarming number of incidents raised the public concern for subway safety, which made “MTA board member Charles Moerdler… [to renew] a push to have the doors installed on New York City’s

It has been called the worst train disaster in U.S. history. The wreckage of the Sunset Limited on September 22, 1993 took 47 lives. There are many circumstances surrounding this wreck that affect the many stakeholders involved.

|• Vehicles at work-People hit by vehicles, falling from vehicles, objects falling from vehicles, vehicles turning over. |

The building had four elevators to reach the factory floors, however, in 1911 only one of those four elevators were functional, workers also had to file down a long narrow hallway to reach it. In addition to those elevators there were two stairways down. One of those stairways was unlocked. The other stairway down was locked from the outside. The building also had a fire escape, but it was very narrow and couldn’t get that many people down it fast enough.

No steel-beam high-rise had ever before (or since) completely collapsed due to fires! However, such complete and nearly symmetrical collapses in tall steel-frame buildings have occurred many times before—all of them due to pre-positioned explosives in a procedure called “implosion” or controlled demolition. (22)

It was still about five hours until our flight and Alfred looked starved after going without food for an hour. We found a parking spot to abandon his car in until we came back from the trip. The bus to the terminal took a while, but it did not justify waking up so early for the 11 o’ clock flight. It wasn’t until we got inside that I found out just how much the airport has changed. We checked in our luggage and printed out our tickets at this machine that scanned our passports. We went up an escalator to find our gate, but before we could get to it there was this huge line we had to go through.

That evening, nearly 600 workers were working in the 10 floors of the Asch Building. Near closing time on March 25th, 1911, the fire broke out on the top floors. Oil that was spread all over the floors and tables of the sweatshop helped to increase the volume of the fire rapidly. The chaos that ensued created a crowded, dangerous pandemonium. One of the main disregarded safety features that lead to nearly 50 deaths was the locked stairwell doors. The doors had been locked by Blanck and Harris as a “safety procedure” to keep employees from stealing. During the fire, workers fled to the stairs, only to find they were trapped inside. In addition, out of the four elevators located in the building, only one was operational, and that elevator broke down after just four trips. In a desperate attempt to flee, girls waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The old and rusted fire escape on the eastern side of the building collapsed after it was overcrowded. Other girls who did not make it to the stairwells or elevators began jumping to the sidewalk. As firefighters arrived to fight the fire, bodies landed on their firehoses, making it difficult to extinguish the flames. Firefighters also brought ladders that only reached up to the 7th floor. The water pressure of the firehoses was not powerful enough to reach the burning levels of the building, and the nets brought to catch jumping women ended up ripped and torn after only a few uses, leaving girls with nothing to catch them apart from the concrete sidewalk. Those in the floors above the fire, including both Blanck and Harris, escaped the inferno to adjoining buildings from the rooftops. Remarkably, after just 18 minutes, the crisis was over. 49 workers had burned to death or were suffocated by the smoke, 36 were dead in the elevator shaft, 59 died from jumping to the concrete sidewalks. 2 later

In 1911, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all

EREPORT # 19310 stated the following: The incident happened thursday and friday of last week. Mekoveonna (Anna) has been whipped many times by her mother's husband. Most recently, on Friday night was the worst of any of them. Mom's husband took a belt and struck her more times than she was able to recall or that her sister (Shay) could recall. At one point during him whipping her, she fell to the ground trying to get away and he then struck her across the face with the belt and continued whipping her even though she was yelling that he hit her face numerous times. After he finished, her mom then whipped her as well. Her sister, Shakoveonce (Shay) is physically handicapped and expressed that her mother has whipped her with a belt, but not as

Ryan Esterbrook, Sears’ Property Loss Manager was deposed. In brief, Mr. Esterbrook testified he was called to the scene of the occurrence within minutes and found Leonor Jaimes sitting on a display platform near the escalator. He spoke with Ms. Leonor’s son since she does not speak English and was told Leonor lost her balance and fell against one of the rails of the escalator when it came to a sudden stop as sparks and flames appeared from under the stairs. Mr. Esterbrook testified he observed the escalator was stopped, but he did not observe sparks or flames and he did not smell anything burning. He had the store’s Softline manager restart the escalator and directly after the stairs began to move, he heard two loud bangs. The Softline manager immediately turned the escalator off and Mr. Esterbrook never learned what was the source of the loud noises coming from the escalator. He reported the only other incidents he was aware of when the escalator stopped occurred when people kicked the sides thereby triggering the skirt switches. As you previously advised, the skirt switches are safety devices on the escalator that cause the stairs to glide to a stop when pressure is applied to the switches. Therefore, Mr. Esterbrook agreed the escalator performed as designed on those prior occassions and did not malfunction. Finally, Mr. Esterbrook had no knowledge of NEIS or its involvement in this case.

A New York Daily News editorial “Dumb as a Doornail” commented “to contemplate this nonsense [of installing protective barriers on subway platforms] is self-evidently a waste of time and money” when that idea first introduced in 2011. The editorial also wrote that “the risks of [death and disfigurement] are far too minuscule to justify all the expense and effort”. Likewise, Jennifer Peltz in “After NYC subway deaths, barriers get new eye” reported that “the challenges [of installing the barriers into the long-established subway system] would be considerable” because of “the widely varying architecture” and “the different types of trains”. Oppositely, Peltz reported that Japan with a long-established subway system has managed to successfully

The Hyatt Regency walkway disaster occurred in Kansas City during the evening of July 17, 1981 in the atrium building of the hotel. The actual disaster comprised of two of the three walkways in the hotel collapsing onto the main floor. The walkways were designed with the fourth floor walkway directly overhead of and suspending the second floor walkway with the third floor walkway offset several meters next to the second and fourth floor walkways (see Figure 1.1). All three of the walkways were suspended from the roof and from either end of them. During a dance competition the fourth floor walkway collapsed onto the second floor walkway, causing both walkways to collapse onto the lobby floor below. According to Ratay (2010) the load on the walkways was only approximately 53% of the code mandated load capacity of the walkway. The disaster resulted in 114 total deaths and 219 injuries, and the structural

A Sydney tramway passenger was injured in collision with another tram, which occurred after the driver collapsed at the controls. The plaintiff argued that the collision could have been avoided if the tramway authority had fitted the tram with system known as ‘dead man’s handle’, a system in use on Sydney’s trains. This would have stopped the tram and avoided the accident. The device had been rejected by the tramway authorities because it was felt that it could cause drivers to become tired, irritated and

As a ramification, it is difficult for human operators to anticipate faults within the system and prevent and manage the risks incurred by an operational accident accordingly, making them “incomprehensible”. Therefore, organisational accidents in complex systems are inevitable as despite defensive measures implemented to mitigate their risk, such as the training of operators and regular maintenance, the fragile design of the systems is the core reason why accidents occur.