The OP probably shouldn’t Google “elevator decapitation.”
They had that on Six Feet Under once. I doubt the OP is going to be sticking his head through any elevator doors without elevators behind them, though.
Good advice. There have been several cases of decapitations. I particularly remember reading about this one when it occurred.
How new are we talking about? WTC was built in the early 1970’s.
And even a single car in a solo shaft has plenty of air gap between the car and the shaft walls. Moreover, the top end of the shaft would not be particularly well-sealed, either. Bottom line, I believe there are plenty of exit paths for rapidly expanding gases.
I’m still curious to hear of a reliable eyewitness report documenting the arrival on the ground floor of the WTC - seconds after aircraft impact - of an elevator car, with doors blown open, containing dazed, burned, living elevator passengers.
IIRC, it was a large effort on their part to disable all of the brakes and make the cab capable of free-fall, and ultimately, the cab fell rapidly, but was cushioned by the column of air it’s atop.
Yes, in standard *Mythbusters *fashion, the elevator was destroyed, but it didn’t come close to reaching terminal velocity.
“James Godfrey Chenault, 55, was one of 5 people who boarded an elevator at the Kingsbridge Center in the Bronx. The elevator malfunctioned, stopping slightly above the 2nd floor. Chenault straddled the doorway and had helped one of the passengers out of the car when it shot upward to the 9th floor, causing his head to remain in the elevator and his body to remain in the shaft.”
Gah.
Here’s a USA Today story about the elevators in the World Trade Center and what happened on 9/11. Elevators didn’t shoot down the shafts, but burning jet fuel did get in the shafts. The elevators generally weren’t a good place to be at the time.
So the only times elevators plunged to the ground were in the Empire State Building in 1945 and the World Trade Center towers in 2001. In both cases, the buildings were struck by large planes. Obviously, this is a rare event. If HotSmoke is still reading the thread, I think you can consider it extremely unlikely for an elevator to plunge to the ground.
I remember a burn victim being interviewed for one of the follow-up programs on 9/11 but I’m not sure how to google it out. This is what I found relating to the pressure in the elevator shafts:
Lobby**
On the ground level, Michael DeVito was just entering the north tower lobby. He was late for his job on the 77th floor. As he walked into the lobby, he felt a huge explosion. A massive blast of air struck him. He guessed it was a suitcase bomb, but apparently it was air from the plane crash shooting down the elevator shafts. Black smoke filled the lobby. DeVito stumbled outside. He looked up to see flames shooting from the building. People were jumping out of windows.[17]
Dave Kravette had come down to the lobby from his Cantor Fitzgerald office to escort guests into the building. After exiting the elevator, he “heard a tremendous crash and what sounded like elevator cars free-falling. Then he saw a fireball blow out of a shaft. Around him, people dived to the ground. He froze and watched the fireball fold back on itself.”[21]
B1 (Basement)
A witness, talking to CNN, in a clip taken before the collapse of the South Tower, but broadcast ~11:10 a.m. - “I was in the basement, it came down, all of the sudden the elevator blew up, smoke, I dragged the guy out, his skin was hanging off, I just dragged him out and helped him out to the ambulance.”
Others**
I don’t know if people saw a blast of fire coming out an open door in the lobby or the doors were actually blown off but it was reported as the doors being blown off. This wouldn’t take much considering they ride on a track.
Do you live somewhere that gets earthquakes? I know somebody who was trapped in an elevator for an hour or so (accounts vary, when he tells it it’s longer than it is in anybody else’s version of the story) at UC Santa Cruz by the 1989 earthquake.
That was a very, very sobering but interesting analysis. Thanks.
IIRC, his design involves a set of brakes on the shaft guides (not cables), held open/off by the weight of the car on the cable. If the cable breaks, the brakes close and stop the car.
Yeah, I knew a kid in Toronto in the late 60’s who disappeared (Welsey Watson, IIRC). He was found about a month later at the bottom of an elevator shaft, where apparently he had fallen. They figure the elevator stopped halfway between floors, he pried to doors open to jump down, and fell back under the elevator and down the shaft.
Then there were the idiots in some public housing building in Toronto who used to climb up on top of the elevators and ride up and down. SOmetimes they’d hop off one stopped elevator onto a beam, wait for the elevator beside it to stop there and hop onto that one. Apparently they would lean over the side of the elvator and make noises into the grill to scare the passengers.
One day one maroon succeeded all too well. He was leaned over making his scary noises when the beam crushed his head against the car, causing blood to ooze into the grill too.
I believe that riding on the roofs of elevator cars is called “elevator surfing.” I think a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst got killed doing this, and kids in New York City have also died doing so.
But to reassure HotSmoke, these people were operating outside the normal bounds of elevator conduct.
There is no way in hell I would “elevator surf”…shoot,where I live you are flirting with death crossing the street.
[quote=“Joe Frickin Friday, post:44, topic:530769”]
How new are we talking about? WTC was built in the early 1970’s.
QUOTE]
OOps my bad. possable multi elevators in one shaft.
I still remember that time in the mall when the escalator I was riding suddenly stopped between floors. I was stuck there for an hour and a half. I kept yelling for help, but people just turned away. I held out as long as I could, but wouldn’t you know it; right after I started urinating, a security guard finally came to rescue me.
Here is everything one might possibly want to know about elevator-related death and injury.
Poor Tom. 
I think I need to stop reading this thread; it isn’t scaring me, but all the head-crushing stories are making me woozy.
ETA: And your link isn’t helping, Tom. :eek: 
My uncle was in an elevator that fell at an industrial plant in the 1960s. He was severely injured and laid up for weeks. The other guy in there with him didn’t make it. Not as fancy as an office building elevator, but a regulation elevator nonetheless.
It does happen.