Residential Elevator Awareness

The National Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System recently received a near miss report involving a firefighter who fell down an elevator shaft unexpectedly encountered during a residential structure fire. This video is graciously provided by the City of Marietta, GA Fire Department in order to raise awareness to the possibility of encountering an open elevator shaft in a single family structure fire. Our thanks to Lieutenant Brian Rutledge for producing this video and to the Marietta Fire Department for sharing it with Fire Near Miss.

[@wizbangFLL]

A firefighter isn't going to be looking through smoke and feeling through their equipment that their is no lock on the door knob? Also, needed to explain environment pre-install, mid-install, and post install. The near miss report indicated the rescue worker fell down shaft, but the presenter seemed too focused on the normal operation rather than the abnormal occurrences. Surprised that there is no code compliance indicating the existence of an elevator shaft (pre or post installation) indication on the outside of the shaft access points, nor any indication of location of where the control, and drive units would be located on the shaft entryway (both are both code misses in my estimation). Also, the hydraulic box doesn't have any labeling surrounding the flammability or toxciisity of the fluid. Again, both misses from a risk management POV. The assumption is that a individual familiar with these structures would respond to a emergency event. We know that this is often not the case, especially in more than individual instances. (mass power outage, tornado, forest fire, flooding)