Authorities are investigating how and why an elevator in a government building malfunctioned and left 14 people trapped inside for more than an hour on Wednesday evening.
A video sent to Apple Daily shows 14 people — mostly children — sitting on the floor and fanning themselves to stay cool while trapped inside the elevator in the Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building in Sham Shui Po.
The video was sent to the newspaper by one of the people trapped, surnamed Lee, who was in the lift with his friends after using the sports center on the building’s sixth floor at about 9:30pm.
Lee said that the elevator doors didn’t open when they arrived on the building’s ground floor, and that the display screen above the lift said it had malfunctioned.
They pressed the emergency alarm several times, but got no response for about five minutes.
“Fortunately my phone had signal, so I called the police,” he said.
But the troubles didn’t end there. Lee told the newspaper that after the emergency services arrived, they couldn’t fully prise the door open and needed to wait for the elevator contractors to arrive at the scene.
That took a further 10 minutes. Even then, Lee said that firefighters only quickened the pace of the rescue process after people inside started reporting that they weren’t feeling well.
The group were finally rescued about 10:30pm after being trapped inside for an hour and 17 minutes.
When Lee asked the firefighters why it took so long to to get them out of the lift, they responded that the building’s security were worried that the elevator would get broken during the rescue process.
Personnel from the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) confirmed the elevator appeared to have been functioning properly, except for the whole doors not opening thing, which, they said, is being investigated.
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