The NY Times reports: Two state lawmakers want New York City’s public housing agency to install a safety device on all its elevators that experts say could have prevented the death of a 5-year-old Brooklyn boy who fell down a shaft while trying to escape a stalled elevator last year.

The lawmakers – Assemblyman Brian P. Kavanagh of Manhattan and State Senator José M. Serrano of the Bronx and East Harlem – have introduced a bill in both houses that would require the agency, the New York City Housing Authority, to place door or zone restrictors on its nearly 3,340 elevators. The devices prevent people trapped inside stalled elevators from opening the cab doors.

The boy who died last year, Jacob Neuman, was riding in an elevator with his 8-year-old brother in a public housing complex in South Williamsburg when the elevator stalled between floors. Electrical malfunctions caused the elevator to lose power and allowed the cab door to open, according to an accident report by the city’s Department of Buildings. Jacob fell 10 stories while trying to jump to the floor below.

The elevator was not equipped with a door restrictor.

“This is just a common-sense device,” said Mr. Kavanagh, who will announce the bill on Saturday at a news conference on the steps of City Hall.

The bill’s impact remains unclear, however, because Howard Marder, a Housing Authority spokesman, announced on Friday that the agency was already installing door restrictors on all its elevators.

The elevator Jacob and his brother, Israel, now 9, were riding that day was installed in December 1986 and was not required to have a door restrictor, according to the Buildings Department. Not until 1993 did the city mandate that all newly installed elevators and existing elevators undergoing renovations be outfitted with the devices. Elevators installed before 1993 that have not been modernized are not required to have them.

Mr. Marder said that nearly 2,600 of the agency’s elevators were equipped with the devices to comply with city requirements. There were 746 elevators at 84 developments that did not have restrictors and were not required to have them. In December 2008, agency management decided to install the devices on all elevators, and so far, they have been placed in 93 elevators. The agency awarded two contracts to install the instruments in the remaining 653 elevators at a cost of $2.2 million. “The work is under way and it will all be completed by the end of the year,” Mr. Marder said.

The Housing Authority’s oversight of the 21-year-old elevator that stalled on Jacob and his brother has been criticized by elevator experts and elected officials. Both the power shutdown and the opening of the cab door appeared to have been caused by the misalignment and wear of electrical contacts in the motor room control panel, the Buildings Department report stated. Elevator experts said those problems stemmed from faulty maintenance – checking for wear on electrical contacts and replacing worn ones should have been part of the elevator’s routine upkeep.

Door restrictors are common in many elevators in the city. They lock the cab door when an elevator is not aligned with a floor landing and prevent anyone from opening the door more than four inches. Because they do not rely on electricity, the devices operate even when an elevator loses power. The devices are part of the elevator safety standards established by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, said the agency should have installed the devices years ago as a precaution, even though they were not required. Several public housing authorities around the country said they had already placed door restrictors on all their elevators or had installed elevators that use other technology to prevent doors from being opened from the inside. Agencies in Chicago; Oklahoma City; Pittsburgh; Oakland, Calif.; and Paterson, N.J., were among them.

Asked why the city’s Housing Authority had not previously installed the devices on all elevators, Mr. Marder said the agency “has been in full compliance with the city code requiring where the devices needed to installed,” and added, “We decided that we would go beyond the requirement and add them to all of our elevators.”

The Neuman family’s lawyer, Herbert S. Subin, as well as Mr. Kavanagh, Mr. Stringer and elevator consultants, said they believed that if the elevator had been equipped with a door restrictor, Jacob would be alive today. “The elevator would have gotten stuck, and Jacob would have been in the elevator much longer while he waited for someone to come get him,” said Scott T. Hayes, a private elevator inspector in Brooklyn.

The bill would also require the Buildings Department to conduct all city-mandated routine inspections on Housing Authority elevators. Currently, the Housing Authority performs those inspections.

(Source: NY Times)