Vietnam - A wrong place to play

Many Vietnamese still neglect safety regulations in elevators and consider them a playground for their kids.

The case of 56-year-old Nguyen Van Hoa who died in a broken elevator in Hanoi has sparked questions about Vietnamese’s awareness on lift safety, newswire Vietnamnet reported.

At Nam Trung Yen Apartment in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District, the elevator has been turned into a kid playground for years.

“During rush hour, many women take their kids to play inside the elevator,” said a female resident who often feeds her son inside the lift. “They make it go up and down, which kids like. Inside the elevator, kids eat quickly and cannot run anywhere.”

Many residents find it annoying that some people have made use of this means of public transport for personal purposes.

“I’ve mentioned about this many times in residential meetings,” said Dinh Dong, a resident at Nam Trung Yen. “You can’t just feed your kids inside elevators. It’s dangerous and affects other people.”

But many residents still don’t care about lift safety although elevator regulations are posted in almost every apartment and building. They often neglect announcements from building managers and don’t participate in simulations of emergency cases carried out by local emergency response teams although a lot of money is spent to organize them every year.

Hieu, an experienced apartment manager, said although elevators are checked for maintenance monthly and inspected by mechanics every day, technical errors such as power cuts, abrupt stops, and free-falls are difficult to avoid.

“Staffs and managers of a high-rise apartment or office have to handle the problem calmly or it would get worse,” he said.

In fact, many people in technical forums have agreed that it is not so stuffy in elevators that people trapped inside can be suffocated. The best way to react when an elevator suddenly stops because of a power cut is to stay calm and wait for a technician, rather than try to find a way to get out.

“It is dangerous to jump out from an elevator,” said The, a lift maintenance engineer. “Only technicians can break the elevator’s door.”

The said elevators are actually a safe means of transportation and fatal accidents are often caused by users and operators.

“I am in this business but when I get stuck inside an elevator, I always seek for help from outside, from those who fix and do maintenance for the lift,” he said. “If you don’t understand how an elevator works and just try to ‘play’ with it, you’ll just get yourself into trouble.”

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