Many stuck in lifts by power cut

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 8

Many stuck in lifts by power cut

PA Wellington While emergency ser* vices coped well with disruptions caused by yesterday’s helicopter crash and subsequent power cuts, lift engineers were “run off their feet” getting people out of lifts. H We had our first caH from someone stuck at 1 p.m. exactly,” said the manager of Electric Construction, John Mardell, “and from then on the lines just went mad.” ' Mr Mardell said his company had about eight technicians working flat out rescuing people. “When the calls came in, if people sounded obviously distressed we attended to them first and if people were handling it well, we left them a little bit longer.” Normally during a power cut, not many people got stuck in lifts but because it happened when people were coming back from lunch about Id times the number of people got stuck, Mr Mardell said.

Even after power had been restored, the problems continued as many lifts did not start again. This was because protection devices dropped to protect the equipment after < a

power surge, Mr Mardell said.

Gillian Davies, a sales representative for Wellington Newspapers, was stuck in a lift in Panama House-for two and a half hours, she said.

The man stuck with her got fairly panicky because his car was outside the building on a metered park, Ms Davies said.

“It was so dark, I couldn’t see my hand.” “Finally someone came about 130 p.m. and prised the door open so we could climb up and out” Ambulance services were not too stretched by the accident but said it was lucky they had had a fairly quiet afternoon otherwise.

Fire services were not too affected. The service had two pumps at the crash site in case they were needed, but this did not affect other services.

Rail transport was hard hit with passengers having to be bused as far 'as Porirua. There were queues of people waiting for buses at Wellington Railway Station yesterday afternoon, and* people were asked to get friends or relative* to pfck them up if sible.