Topeka Capital Journal – November 22, 2013
Seventeen visitors to the Shawnee County Juvenile Detention Center were stuck in an overloaded elevator for about 82 minutes earlier this week, an official said Friday.
One visitor, a child, was taken by American Medical Response ambulance to a Topeka hospital with anxiety issues, said Maj. Tim Phelps of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections.
Phelps said 17 people, including two children, got onto the elevator about 7 p.m. Tuesday after visiting juvenile inmates on the third floor of the Juvenile Detention Center at 401 S.E. 8th.
Phelps indicated the elevator’s computer determined it was carrying more than its 2,100-pound weight capacity and froze it between the building’s second and third floors to keep it from falling. People inside then pushed a button that enabled them to communicate with a county department of corrections control center.
Corrections employees contacted the company that services their elevators, and service personnel arrived at the scene at 7:55 p.m., Phelps said.
He said all people inside the elevator were able to exit on the second floor by about 8:22 p.m. Corrections department medical staff then assessed their conditions.
The corrections department had the elevator tested before it was put back in service, and an inspection determined it was fully operational, Phelps said.
He said the corrections department plans in the future to be more careful about not letting people overload elevators.
He said that though jail officials were a bit concerned about the length of time the elevator service people took to responded, they showed up within the one-hour period allowed in the corrections department’s contract with the company involved.
Phelps said the jail staff chose not to call Topeka firefighters because they wouldn’t have been able to get the elevator moving and the jail already had medical staff present to assess the conditions of the people involved.
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