Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 10/19/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Pearly Chan An elevator inspection certificate in Campus Village Building B shows an inspection date of June 15, 2005, and an expiration date of July 14, 2005.

Several students have been trapped for hours at a time in elevators located in Campus Village, the on-campus residence halls that opened in Fall 2005.

The most recently trapped student, Lindsay Bryant, a Spartan Daily staff writer and SJSU junior, said she was stuck in a Building B elevator for approximately two-and-a-half hours Saturday evening.

"I got in at 7:40 p.m. and got out at about 10:15," she said.

Bryant said she entered the elevator on the 12th floor and pressed the first floor button.

After the doors closed, the elevator began rapidly dropping to the fifth floor, where it stopped, made a loud bang, dropped a little more, made another loud bang and became wedged somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors.

Bryant said she pushed the emergency call button and told the woman who answered that she was stuck. About 20 minutes later, a resident adviser arrived and stayed outside of the elevator the entire time she was trapped to let her know what progress was being made to get her out.

A technician was called, but Bryant said the closest one available to come to campus was in San Mateo - an approximate 45-minute drive from SJSU.

When the technician arrived, Bryant said that after diagnosing the problem he had to "manually pull the elevator up to the fifth floor" which took another 45 minutes.

"The technician said it was a complete computer failure," Bryant said.

Bryant said that when she got out, she did not notice anyone taking a report, and she said no one asked for any information from her.

When Susan Hansen, the director of university housing services, was first contacted she said she was not aware that a student had gotten stuck in a Building B elevator on Saturday.

"I will not argue that we had some problems at the beginning of the year, but if it's happening now, it's an anomaly," she said.

But she later said in an e-mail that she had received a report that a student had been stuck.

After looking into the situation, Hansen related through e-mail details that sounded similar to the report given by Bryant, but with a very different timetable.

"My understanding is that the situation took about 45 minutes to resolve from start to finish," she said.

Hansen said that when a student is trapped in an elevator the emergency operator contacts the University Police Department, who then contacts an elevator company to come out and fix the problem and get the students out of the elevator.

"We have a company on call 24 hours a day," Hansen said. "We consider it a high priority issue, an elevator company needs to get to the campus."

University officials deny lapsed inspections are to blame for trappings

Hansen said problems with elevators in residential buildings are not uncommon because of the high level of traffic they receive.

But some students living in Campus Village believe that improper maintenance may be to blame. They wonder if lapsed inspections and the subsequent expired permits they have noticed displayed in the elevators are a cause of the problem.

Iyohna Pendleton, a sophomore majoring in interior design, said she noticed that the permits displayed in elevators in Building B and Building C are more than a year past their expiration dates.

"I tripped off that. That's not safe … they ought to fix it," she said.

Of the 11 elevators located in the buildings of Campus Village, at least six displayed expired permits when checked on Monday.

Hansen said that although display permits are expired, the elevators permits are current. She said all of the elevators in Campus Village passed inspection over the summer, and the permits were reissued.

"The physical permits are not posted at this time, and I am in the process of locating them," she said.

Title 8, Section 3000 of the California Code of Regulations states that "no elevator shall be operated without a valid, current permit issued by the division."

The code states elevators must be inspected at least once per year by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and the valid permit "shall be posted conspicuously and securely in the elevator car."

Scarlett McAlpine, an assistant in the San Jose branch of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, said that an elevator permit expired by more than one year is "standard."

"That's pretty average," McAlpine said. "Most elevators are expired by one year or two years."

McAlpine said her office has "many" elevator inspectors out every day to inspect the elevators as fast as they can.

"It's not like we don't want to inspect them," McAlpine said.

McAlpine said contracted elevator service companies let her office know when they have done work on an elevator and that the elevator needs to be inspected and renewed.

"Whoever comes out and fixes it calls us," she said.

She said that if her office was made aware of a problem elevator, it would "red flag it" and try to send an inspector out as quickly as possible.

Hansen, the director of university housing services, said she is very concerned about the safety and security of the students in Campus Village.

But despite the housing department's commitment to elevator safety, Bryant is not the only student who has gotten stuck in Campus Village.

Elevator problems cause students to rethink campus housing

Tifanie Williams, a junior majoring in child development, said she was trapped in the elevators in Building B twice last year, once for 45 minutes and the second time for 15 minutes.

Williams said that the first time she got stuck, she was going up to her room on the 15th floor. She said the elevator stopped at several floors to let students off and continued higher.

But when the elevator arrived at the top floor, the doors did not open. She said the elevator made a "jerky" movement upward before all of the power shut off.

"I started freaking out," Williams said.

She said she pushed the emergency call button, and when a man answered she told him she was trapped in the elevator.

"He told me to calm down, asked me questions like if I was in the elevator now," Williams said. "The questions he was asking me were so stupid."

She said that after about 20 minutes, UPD arrived and a short time later the fire department also arrived, but she had to wait for a technician to drive from Santa Cruz to get her out of the elevator.

"I counted at least 45 minutes," she said.

Williams said that in addition to the two times she was stuck, she once waited outside of an elevator in Building B where a friend was trapped for three hours.

Williams lived on campus for two years, but said her elevator incidences were the "icing on the cake" that helped her make a decision not to return to on-campus housing this year.

Kayla Livingston, a sophomore majoring in hospitality, said she and two friends were trapped in an elevator in Building C last year.

"We got stuck in the elevator for like 45 minutes. It started shaking, then going down, then shaking, then stopped," Livingston said.

Victoria Avila, a junior majoring in photography, said she noticed one of the elevators in Building B is out of service, and one of the other elevators has been acting "really weird."

"It will stay open for a while, close, stay open, close, and it won't go anywhere," she said.

Avila said she experienced similar problems last year.

"Sometimes it'll only be one elevator functioning at one time. It's really annoying, and last year, I lived on the 13th floor," she said.

Susan Hansen, the director of university housing services, said that currently, only one out of the 11 elevators in the Campus Village buildings is out of service because it is waiting for a part.

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