An elderly man in Shenzhen, China was seriously hurt when he fell through a escalator he was standing on, causing his leg to get stuck.
According to online reports, the incident happened at a shopping mall in Shenzhen’s Bao’an District on Tuesday (May 24) morning. The 66-year-old man, surnamed Liu, had visited the mall with his wife to do some shopping.
The incident occurred when he stepped onto a downward-moving escalator by himself. The escalator initially seemed to be working normally, before suddenly suffering a malfunction.
That caused the floor plate under Mr Liu to crack open and give way, causing his left leg to drop into the gap and get stuck.
Hong Kong news portal Apple Daily reported that despite being stuck, the escalator did not stop immediately and moved forwards for another two metres before finally coming to a halt.
At the time, no other people were in the vicinity and a short time elapsed before passers-by noticed Mr Liu’s predicament. They then immediately alerted the authorities.
When rescue workers arrived at the scene, they noticed that Mr Liu seemed emotionally unstable and was close to passing out from the pain.
Sina Weibo
A firefighter said that the rescuers had to widen the gap but also exercise extreme caution to ensure that Mr Liu was not injured even further, Shenzhen Daily reported.
It took close to 40 minutes before firefighters were able to pull Mr Liu’s leg out of the gap. When freed, his entire left leg was covered in blood, and he was immediately rushed to a local hospital.
There, he was diagnosed with a fractured left thigh, and had to remain in the hospital for observation.
According to Shanghaiist, the escalator at the mall had just been serviced 10 days earlier, and recently passed its yearly inspection.
The episode is the latest in a spate of recent escalator-related mishaps in China.
Last July, an incident in which a woman died after she fell through a loose escalator floor panel at a Hubei department store attracted worldwide attention. The 30-year-old woman had been on the escalator with her son, but managed to thrust her son to safety before being “swallowed” by the escalator machinery.
In October last year, a four-year-old boy also lost his life after he got stuck between the escalator’s handrail and the floor at a train station in Chongqing.
seanyap@sph.com.sg
Sina Weibo, Internet screengrabs, CCTVNews Facebook, The Star/ANN
YouTube screengrabs, Sina Weibo
