Escalators in China: stop it. First you kill a man, now you go after small children?
In Zhongshan, Guangdong province yesterday, a two-year-old boy lost the bottom half of his leg after the shoe he was wearing — a “holed shoe,” as they’re called, a local version of Crocs — got sucked into the side of the escalator he was riding, according to Guangzhou Daily. The boy was sent to the hospital in serious condition, but we’re told he’s currently off the respirator and stable, though it’s unclear whether he’ll regain his ability to walk. This happened on an Otis escalator, if you’d like to know.
Thankfully there’s no video of this incident, but in the video after the jump, you’ll see someone do a reenactment with the shoe: up against the edge of the escalator, it simply disappears, sucked into the cranks and never again seen.
And in Jiangsu, a three-year-old girl slipped near the top of an escalator and got her hand stuck — so completely stuck that rescuers elected to open the escalator’s top panel instead of risking pulling her hand out. The girl is bawling in the video the entire time, by the way. One of the screws, for whatever reason, fails to turn, so 10 minutes later, the escalator’s servicemen arrive and fidget with some other stuff before the girl is finally freed. Her X-ray shows nasty dislocations and broken bones.
If there’s a moral here, it probably doesn’t need to be said. To the videos:
Boy:
Girl:
(H/T Alicia)
