E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSTwo workers are injured when a car falls 40 feet down an elevator shaft in a Manhattan building. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
A car fell down a New York City garage elevator shaft Tuesday morning, injuring two people, the fire department said.
FDNY via Twitter
A car plunged down a garage elevator shaft in Manhattan's Upper East Side on Tuesday.
The victims were taken to the hospital and are in stable condition.
A parking attendant was driving into the elevator on the fifth floor of the garage around 9:45 a.m., but when he pulled in, the elevator car wasn't there, NBCNewYork.com reported. As the car plunged down, it injured a worker on a lower floor.
Firefighters had to extricate the driver from the vehicle. An FDNY spokesman told msnbc.com both he and the other garage employee were taken to Cornell Medical Center in stable condition.
The garage, which also serves as a Hertz rental location, is on East 76th Street near First Avenue in Manhattan.
A dentist who works near the garage told NBCNewYork.com he doesn't recall there being any major issues with the six-story garage, other than the elevator temporarily being out of order last winter during a power outage in the building.
The FDNY tweeted several pictures from the scene, including one of firefighters using pulleys to drag the car down from the shaft back down to street level.
More content from NBCNews.com:
Leave a Comment:
That's why they say: "Take the stairs!"
You can't fix stupid.
How can a person drive into an elevator and not notice the elavator isn't there?
To the driver:
"Here's your card"
Rontron - how do you expect him to see the floor while sitting in the car, which is blocking his view downward? It's more surprising when people walk into an elevator that's missing.
I've got to agree with Rontron here:
How the blazes does on not notice that there is not an elevator there when the doors open? Especially when the person who drove into it works there and should know what to look for!
RWING banned, 1 deleted, derailing about President Bush and condemning 'sniveling liberals'. Never stopped derailing.
Wow! What a rush!
I know the worlds funniest elevator joke but it requires a visual punch line. You would really laugh hard. Really, really funny. It's too much. Seriously. Not kidding. My side hurts just thinking about it. A blood bank and a sperm bank. Oh, man.
Good thing we bailed out the banks.
To BOB, wtf does your comment have to do with anything.
I believe he was referring to the blood BANK and sperm BANK. Bob's comment was about bailing out the BANKs. One could argue that a blood BANK and sperm BANK are both BANKs.
It's almost a play on words. In English, "bank" has different meanings.
There was a woman who was a little down on her luck. She started going to donate blood to make a little extra money. The first Monday of every week she went to the blood bank and hopped on an elevator and went to the third floor to donate. And every time she went she saw the same man on the elevator who was also donating blood for some extra cash. This went on for about 4 months. The next time she got on the elevator the man pushed the 6th floor button instead. The girl asked him why he wasn't going to the blood bank. He said that there was a sperm bank on the 6th floor that paid double what the blood bank did. The next month the man saw the woman get on the elevator and asked her if she was going to the third floor. She shook her head and gargled, "Noope Sixth?
I'm going to guess, given stonepipe's pointless rambling, that there is a lot of green in his pipe.
This is almost as funny as the woman in a wheelchair trying to take the escalator.....LOLOLOLOL
Their IQ test came back negative!!!!!!
Two cars walk into a bar. The first car says.......Ahhh heck, I forget the rest.
If it were an attended elevator, the operator would be saying, "ground floor, hoods, fenders, doors, bumpers".
i guess the elevator was too slow
Having lived most of my life in buildings with elevators I always check to make sure the car is actually there before stepping inside. Never figured you wouldn't have to check just because you were in a car and not on foot.
You would think there would be a light or reflective sign at the rear of the elevator so you would know it was there.
I'm sorry, but this part made me laugh:
"A parking attendant was driving into the elevator on the fifth floor of the garage around 9:45 a.m., but when he pulled in, the elevator car wasn't there..."
Okay, so if it wasn't there, what the heck happened to it? Did it just disappear? Was it ever there? Glad to hear everybody will be fine, though. You don't get stories like this every day.
So sorry for the parties involved and hope they survive and feel much better soon.
On another note, the first time I ever read about one of the 'car elevators' I remember thinking what happens if the doors open and the elevator isn't there, or if the cables snap, or if the elevator gets stuck and someone is stuck sitting in the car..................so like I said above, so sorry for the injuries, but I definitely got a big chuckle out of this story.................it was bound to happen sooner or later.
BTW, why does it take 2 attendants to park 1 car?
one check the door the other to push the button
dam - comment #11 - When all else fails, read the ENTIRE article - two or three times.
mj
Union job
Thirdview,
The article was changed, the original version made it sound like the 2 attendants were both in the car.
D...wmc???
I'm sorry, but, there is no way I would drive into an elevator and just assume the elevator car would be there. Murphy's Law has a way of kicking in when you least expect it to. Glad the two employees are ok. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about the car. As someone who gets very attached to their automobile, it would be upsetting to know that my car met such an untimely demise.
It'll buff right out.
Romney's new house has a car elevator. No kidding!
msnbc dot... who? Identity crisis!
Oops!
wow, too bad the little receipt says they are not responsible for car damage.
talk about getting the shaft...
This doesn't sound right to me?
Drag the car down? (lol) Wouldn't it be more likely that were "Lowering" the car down to street level to remove it?
I'm no writer by any means but dang, this writer is off their rocker or ? lol.
BTW, I'd love to see the picture of someone dragging a car down an elevator shaft! I know how long that whole event would take, about 2 seconds then Boom, crash.. lol
I was having visions of Bruce Willis in his movie Live Free or Die Hard with that Asian Girl in the elevator fighting in the SUV and then seeing it go flying down the shaft. Glad to know those two people will be okay. While I am biting my lip at the thought of what happened, I am trying to imagine the 911 call and the poor fella trying to explain how he managed to get a car stuck down that shaft. I mean, how does one exactly miss that big of a hole in the floor? And if the front wheels go in first, how fast was he going that he couldn't just stop? Then again, with the front weighting more then the the back and top heavy it probably didn't help. No doubt the Fire Department won't see many cases like this, we would hope at least. I don't imagine the attendent will be using that job as a reference on his resume.
I agree that it would be difficult to see the elevator while in a car, some folks here seem to think so as well. I would like to know if the driver was texting, or was he backing into the elevator as the picture infers? And don't parking attendants drive as fast as possible to deliver?
This entire story is fishy..........when an elevator car is not in view, huge metal cables are............so was this attendant driving so fast that he was able to severe the cables that would have normally been an indication that the car was missing?
I think that attendant will have a whole lot of explaining to do!
Maybe the elevator car was at one of the floors ABOVE where the incident occurred, so there were no cables to be severed? Otherwise it would have been pretty difficult for them to have pulled the vehicle down to the ground level with the elevator car in the way, I'd suspect.
Bad elevator matenence man left his jumper wires hooked up in the controller jumping out the safety circut in order to service the elevator. So the hoistway doors open because it thinks the elevator is there ..but not. bet he went back and took them off quick.
Who Stairs! Who Stairs!