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I-TEAM: Escalator Rule Changes

(WCCO) There are about 20,000 escalators in buildings across the state. We ride them assuming someone is checking to ensure they are safe, but few undergo regular inspections.

That's about to change.

Two months after the I-TEAM reported the serious injuries children have suffered on escalators the state is now going to require annual inspections, but there may be other things that can make escalators safer.

Lisa Hastings-Mirza felt like she was watching herself when she saw young Madeline on WCCO-TV say, "I was going down the escalator. My foot got caught."

"It just brought it back," said Hastings-Mirza.

It brought her back to 1971 when she was just 5 years old and her own foot was sucked into an escalator at a Woolworth's store.

"We were halfway down when I felt the step kind of tilt back and I felt my foot kind of being pulled in, so I went to grab her but it had already grabbed her foot," said Shirley Phillips, Hastings-Mirza's mother.

"My foot was right inside the side of the escalator. All my tendons were severed, the bones all crushed," said Hastings-Mirza.

After four surgeries, months in a cast and years of doctor visits, Hastings-Mirza made a full recovery.

"The scar starts here and works all the way up here, my toes were actually wired together," said Hastings-Mirza looking at her foot.

She still sometimes feels the effects of what happened 35 years later.

"Maybe a little numbness in the middle I think that's from a little bit of nerve damage," she said.

Meanwhile, young Madeline is doing well, but a foot specialist will be part of her yearly checkups until she becomes a teenager.

Minnesota doesn't track the number of accidents that happen on escalators, but state inspectors became concerned last year when, within six months, three children had their feet sucked into them.

Escalators all carry signs that show how to ride: children next to their parents holding their hands, standing away from the sides. Watch most escalators and you'll see kids who don't follow the rules.

But the I-TEAM found even those that do can find themselves in danger.

"She was standing beside me being very well behaved," said Phillips.

Madeline's father, Jason, said, "I recall getting on with her and trying to stay as close to the middle as we could and even at time it seemed as though maybe the escalator wasn't wide enough for two people even a full grown adult and a child."

Different Sizes Of Steps

According to companies that provide replacement parts for escalators, the steps come in three sizes: small, medium and large. The large is 40 inches wide. The small is just 24 inches. The national code, which is used in Minnesota, said escalator steps can be as narrow as 22 inches.

The I-TEAM made a box the size of each step to help visualize how much room you really have when you step on an escalator. WCCO-TV then asked Jason, an average size guy, to walk onto each mock-step with Madeline.

The first one is the large one, at 40 inches wide.

Jason and Madeline step in and Jason said, "More than adequate."

The second is 32 inches.

"It's getting tighter," said Jason.

The third one is 24 inches, the same size step Jason and Madeline rode at Maplewood Mall the day she was injured. A step that size puts Madeline dangerously close to the side of the escalator.

"It's hard for me to believe that someone could imagine an adult and a child on a step that narrow," said Jason.

Yet the signs said that's how you are supposed to ride.

When WCCO-TV asked state inspectors and safety experts across the country about these narrow escalators, they told us this has never really been looked into.

After the I-TEAM's investigation, it seems logical that you should not have your child stand next to you on an escalator this narrow.

Safety Measure Would Eliminate Dangerous Gaps

That's particularly important because most escalators do not have the one safety measure that would eliminate the dangerous side gap entirely. It's called a Step Safety Sideplate.

Here's how it works: the small piece of plastic attaches to the side of an escalator step. You can barely see it when riding, but what you will notice when it is there is that the space between the step and the wall is eliminated and so are the injuries.

Step Safety Sideplates were installed on all the escalators at Atlanta's rail stations about 20 years ago. Since then studies show there have been no entrapments. A letter by the Mass Transit Administration in Maryland touts the same kinds of results when they were placed on escalators in its rail stations.

Manufacturer records show Maplewood Mall had Step Safety Sideplates in the 1970s. The I-TEAM found them still on one of the mall's escalators, but not the one on which Madeline was injured.

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