In Greater Noida, family of 8 trapped for 2 hours rescued after firemen cut open the lift doors

NOIDA: A family of eight, including three minors and two senior citizens, was trapped for nearly two hours in an elevator, which sank to the basement from the ground floor at Golf Gardenia in Greater Noida's Sector Alpha II on Wednesday night before the fire brigade rescued them.

Other residents and maintenance staff of the condominium managed to part the elevator's doors just enough to place a brick in between to let some air in as those inside panicked about asphyxiation. It was a while before the first responders arrived because phones had feeble or no network and the alarm button apparently did not work.
Fire safety officer Indra Pal Singh said they were informed about the incident around 10.30pm, almost an hour after the family entered the lift. Firemen eventually deployed hydraulic cutters to cut the door panels and rescue the family.
Preliminary investigation indicates the elevator malfunctioned, Singh said. "The lift had a free fall from the ground floor to the basement. Such cases are usually noted when there is an interruption in electricity supply. In this case, there was no disruption in the power supply. It seems the lift malfunctioned," he said.
Global Lift, the company maintaining the elevator, however, claimed there was no snag and the lift had descended to the basement because it was loaded beyond its maximum capacity of 500kg.
Arvind Kumar, an official from the lift maintenance company, said the elevator was serviced in March and its buttons were replaced too. "The elevator clearly mentions that only 10 passengers within 500kg weight can board the lift at a time. In this case, the lift was overloaded," Kumar told TOI.
Dushyant Pratap Singh (39), who was stuck in the elevator of the condominium's tower D with his family members, accused the RWA of negligence and claimed that this was not the first time this had happened in the society.
Singh said the family - father Ravindra Pal (66), mother Kusum (65), wife Astha (32), children Saksham (8) and Ena (3), nephews Om Vishwas Singh (23) and Aditya Singh (17) - boarded the lift around 9.30pm to go to the first floor, where their flat is. "Instead of going up, the lift went down. Though the light and fans inside the lift were working, it was suffocating. Initially, we could not get any cellphone network but eventually one phone worked and we managed to contact the maintenance team," he recounted.
The family had been trapped for around 15 minutes when help first arrived - electricians and a group of residents who tried to prise open the door panels but failed. For nearly 40 minutes, officials from the lift maintenance firm tried to guide electricians on the phone. When nothing worked, the society's maintenance staff called 112 and the cops alerted the fire brigade. It was nearly 11.15pm when the family finally walked out of the lift after the firemen cut open the door panels with hydraulic tools.
"A few days ago, four children were stuck in the lift of tower A. They were rescued after 20 minutes. It seems the RWA is not doing its job properly. Some of them no longer live in the society," Singh alleged.
RWA vice-president Karan Bhambri refuted Singh's claim, saying Wednesday's incident was the first such in the society. "We had a detailed discussion with the lift engineer after Wednesday night's incident. The engineer told us that the lift sank to the basement as it was overloaded beyond its capacity of 500kg," he said.
So far, no police complaint has been submitted by the Singh family. "A team from Beta-2 police station visited the society on receiving the distress call on Dial 112 around 10.30pm. All the eight people stuck in the lift were rescued safely with the help of fire department officials," ACP-1 Greater Noida Arvind Kumar said.
A similar incident was reported from Shri Radha Sky Garden Society in Greater Noida's Sector 16 B where a woman and her four-and-a-half-year-old child were stuck in the lift of tower D for 15 minutes around 4pm on Wednesday. The lift remained stuck between the fourth and fifth floors following an outage.