This is a mundane topic to be blogging about but I felt I have to after reading on The Stars about a 2 years boy in Muar who lost his fingers to the escalator in a supermarket!
How many times have we seen parents letting their kids playing with the escalators. I've seen kids running up and down an escalator while their parents just looked on. It's good that you are not strict and allows your kid to have some fun but come on! Choose something fun that is not dangerous.
The escalator is a convenient contraption but it also has it's danger. There are many reports about children losing their toes and fingers to the escalators.
When using the escalator with your kid, you should be holding his hand especially if he is just a toddler. Make sure that his feet are not near the sides of the escalators. That's where people get their toes caught most of the time.
People often thought that the dangerous part about using the escalator is when you step on and step off the escalator but riding the escalator can caused serious injury also. A guy in the US related how he lost his toes when he was 4 years old. He was riding the escalator with his father and his sneaker was rubbing the side of the escalator when his sneaker got sucked in. His toes got ripped off from his foot!
In Singapore, I once read about a kid who got his foot caught in the escalator also and now this boy in Muar. The danger is there and real! In the US, every year 10,000 people are admitted to hospital due to escalator injury and most of them are children.
So please mind your kids whenever you are near an escalator.
Found this from www.snopes.com :
1. In 2003, a 7 year old girl lost three fingers when her hand got jammed in an escalator at a Dillards in St. Petersburg, Florida, as she tried to free her stuck shoe. Hers was far from the first injury caused by that escalator: between 1998 and 2003, more than 80 people had gotten shoes or clothing caught in it, with more than a dozen of them having entire shoes ripped from their feet and ingested by the machine.2. In 2001, a 7 year old Modesto, California, boy lost three toes on an escalator at 3Com Park in San Francisco.
3. 1n 1998, a woman died on an escalator at a subway station in Washington after her coat and sweater became entangled in the stairs, strangling her.
4. In 1997, a 5 year old St. Petersburg girl had her foot mangled by an escalator at the local Burdine's department store. The injury left her big toe dangling by a piece of skin.
5. In 1997, a 4 year old Houston boy's foot became trapped between steps and the sidewall of an escalator in a Wells Fargo building. The impact pulverized his foot immediately, slicing the bottom of his foot and causing him to lose three toes.
6. In 1963, a 77 year old woman caught her shoe heel and hair in the steps of an escalator at Maas Brothers in St. Petersburg. Her head became wedged between two steps of the moving stairs. She died as a result of the injuries.
1 comment:
I talked to a woman who was at the Maas Brothers store when the sixth incident took place. At the time, she was a clerk at the store and was travelling down the escalator, which had rubber steps, and the woman was in front of her and when she fell her head was sucked in and the lady I was talking to said she had to run up the escalator to keep from falling over the woman, who by this time had her whole head under the end of the escalator and wasn't moving besides the twitching of her hands. She said she is never gonna forget that day, it was really bad. She said the woman's head wasn't visible, and it took them awhile to shut the escalator off and then they had a hard time removing the woman. She still is haunted by the event, and what she remembers most is the hands twitching because that was all the life left in the woman after the escalator got ahold of her.
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