HANGZHOU: A woman was killed while taking a lift in China on Thursday morning, the latest in a string of accidents involving building machinery.
The 21-year-old entered from the 16th storey of an apartment block in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in eastern China, local reports said.
She was partly in the lift when it suddenly went up, and her head was caught in the elevator.
A resident told the media that there were frequent problems with the lifts in the building, which was built in the 1990s.
There was another accident in Jiangsu on Monday, which resulted in the death of a woman, Xinhua reported.
The woman was stuck in a gap between a cargo lift and the lift platform in Wuxi City. "Her body was severely distorted when rescuers arrived at the scene", Xinhua said.
The two lift accidents came in the same week an escalator fault caused a woman to be crushed in the escalator machinery in Hubei.
Xiang Liujuan, 30, died after falling through a loose escalator landing panel in a shopping centre in Hubei.
The video of Xiang being "swallowed" by the escalator after pushing her son to safety went viral, and has brought China's safety standards into the spotlight.
In another incident on Monday, a one-year-old's left arm was caught in the stairs of an escalator in a shopping mall in China's Guangxi region.
The child's arm, which rescuers pulled out half an hour later, was mangled.
A 2014 survey on 2,523 elevators aged 15 years or older showed 7 per cent of them had major safety risks, state media Xinhua news agency said.
The Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) of China has also revealed that almost five in 100 lifts and escalators have been found with problems.
Last year, there were 48 elevator and escalator-related accidents in China with a total of 36 deaths reported to quality inspection authorities, according to the administration, Xinhua said. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network
SEPTEMBER 2014 - A Similar Incident Happen
A CCTV video that shows a malfunctioning lift shooting up and slowly crushing a student to death as he steps inside has gone viral in China.
The young man, who could not move away quickly enough as the lift jerked upwards, is caught between the floor of the lift and the top of the door, where he is crushed to death.
The video footage is from a surveillance camera fixed inside the malfunctioning lift at Huaqiao University, in the city of Xiamen in south-east China's Fujian Province.
The three-minute video clip of the incident, which was one of the most widely shared items on social media throughout China yesterday, shows the last minutes of the student's life as his body jerks from a lack of oxygen.
The as yet unnamed man was said to be an architecture student from the university who was standing at the front of a small group of people when the doors opened.
Another student also at the scene said that the pair were waiting for the lift on the third floor. The doors opened and the lift started to move as the victim stepped inside.
He told local media that the young man seemed more surprised than worried as the lift started to rise upwards.
He had not had time to react when it suddenly slammed him into the top of the lift's doorframe, trapping his upper torso and left leg in the left, while the rest of his body dangled outside.
Rescue workers rushed to free the young man's body, but he was pronounced dead at the scene, having suffocating because his lungs were crushed and he was unable to breathe.
Huaqiao University President Jia Yimin promised a full investigation into the incident which has shocked the country where there have been a number of incidents involving lifts.
Education officials responded by vowing to conduct safety inspections on all university lifts. In one month alone recently there were six serious injuries involving lift malfunctions of which five ended fatally.
SEPTEMBER 2014 - A Similar Incident Happen
A CCTV video that shows a malfunctioning lift shooting up and slowly crushing a student to death as he steps inside has gone viral in China.
The young man, who could not move away quickly enough as the lift jerked upwards, is caught between the floor of the lift and the top of the door, where he is crushed to death.
The video footage is from a surveillance camera fixed inside the malfunctioning lift at Huaqiao University, in the city of Xiamen in south-east China's Fujian Province.
The three-minute video clip of the incident, which was one of the most widely shared items on social media throughout China yesterday, shows the last minutes of the student's life as his body jerks from a lack of oxygen.
The as yet unnamed man was said to be an architecture student from the university who was standing at the front of a small group of people when the doors opened.
Another student also at the scene said that the pair were waiting for the lift on the third floor. The doors opened and the lift started to move as the victim stepped inside.
He told local media that the young man seemed more surprised than worried as the lift started to rise upwards.
He had not had time to react when it suddenly slammed him into the top of the lift's doorframe, trapping his upper torso and left leg in the left, while the rest of his body dangled outside.
Rescue workers rushed to free the young man's body, but he was pronounced dead at the scene, having suffocating because his lungs were crushed and he was unable to breathe.
Huaqiao University President Jia Yimin promised a full investigation into the incident which has shocked the country where there have been a number of incidents involving lifts.
Education officials responded by vowing to conduct safety inspections on all university lifts. In one month alone recently there were six serious injuries involving lift malfunctions of which five ended fatally.
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