ALKHOBAR: People who live or work in high-rise buildings go in and out of elevators every day as they shuttle between floors. For office executives at the Habitat Building in Alkhobar on Sunday, they went in but didn’t go out as expected.
For 45 minutes, 17 elevator passengers learned what happens when the 15-passenger capacity limit is ignored. As many multinational companies have offices in the building, it was that a multitude of nationalities got to get to know each other a little better.
“Our cell phones had no signal, and there was no way of reaching out to the outside world,” said elevator hostage K.M. Sabik, who works in one of the corporate offices at Habitat.
“It was very, very scary. It was mid-afternoon and the outside temperature was hovering between 42 and 45 degrees Celsius. Humidity was killing us. Breathing was extremely difficult. We don’t know how we survived those excruciating 45 minutes. It was hellish.”
The incident happened in part because one of the building’s three elevators was already out of service, compounded by many people in the building going down to the basement mosque for Dhuhr prayer and a building maintenance man who could not be found.
“There were nearly 200 worshippers that afternoon and only two elevators were in working condition. That resulted in 17 people getting onboard instead of the specified 15,” said Syed Owais, one of the executives of a multinational company with offices at Habitat.
“The issue, however, is not overloading but the availability of help at hand. This is such a big building, and the maintenance guys should have been around immediately,” said Owais. “God forbid, if there were fire in the building and elevators got stuck what would have happened?”
Representatives of the Otis Elevator Corp. were contacted, and servicemen quickly resolved the incident, freeing the elevator hostages from an incident they did not count on. Angry executives blamed building maintenance staff for not taking proper care of the elevators.
“This was very bad. People inside the stuck lift were trying desperately to get some oxygen. Some of them ripped open the false ceiling in the lift to get fresh air. It was panic inside, and as time went by people became even more desperate,” said Sabik.
Civil Defense officials said it would be a good idea for elevator passengers to keep track of the unit’s capacity and not overload it, but they also warned building operators to make sure that building infrastructure — including elevators and fire exits — should be maintained and kept in proper working order.
Failure to do so can result in severe punishment, including considerable fines.
It takes a few seconds to count the number of people in an elevator and compare that with the elevator’s capacity sign, which can be uplifting; apparently, the alternative can be 45 minutes of disbelief and discomfort.
