Four men and two women were carried out. Four had broken limbs and possible fractures of the spine, another a broken thigh and the others injuries the extent of which has not been determined. An investigation is under way by state and municipal departments to fix the blame for the accident. It is the second time recently that a Wiss elevator has fallen. Some months ago an attendant was slightly injured in a.. The..
The victims were:
Norman Downing of 65 South Tenth street, both legs broken and a possible fracture of the spine.
Mrs. Frances Tongue of 197 Hillside avenue, Glen Ridge, possible fracture of the spine and fracture of the left leg and thigh.
G.F. Ciminotti of 33 Liberty place, Weehawken, possible fracture of the spine and compound fracture of the left ankle.
Miss Lillian M. Stickel of 63 Hudson street, extent of injuries not determined.
Dr. C.J. Meierhoffer of 266 Orchard street, Elizabeth, left leg broken in two pieces, bruises and injuries to his back.
Benjamin J. Mason, colored, of 81 Parrow street, Orange, elevator operator, extent of injuries not determined, complained of pains in legs and back.
The elevator car, capable of carrying 2,000 pounds, had started from the top of the building and picked up persons at the ninth, eighth and seventh floors, according to Mason. As he passed below the seventh floor he got a signal to stop at the fifth floor. At the same instant the electric light in the top of the car went out and the car dropped like a snot.
Mason shouted to the passengers to drop to the floor and he crouched as he gave the order. The car hit the steel buffer spring in the bottom of the well as it traveled at great speed and then rebounded several feet. Then it dropped back again.
It was but a moment after the accident that a swarm of people were in the corridors of the building. Ambulances were sent for and four arrived shortly. Police reserves were sent to control the crowd. Downing, Ciminotti, Mason and Mrs. Tongue were taken to the City Hospital. Judge Fred G. Stickel Jr. came to take his sister to her home.
Dr. Meierhoffer was taken home of his wife, who had been waiting outside the building in his automobile. He was later removed to the Elizabeth General Hospital.
Detectives Rottenberg and Capadonno were sent from police headquarters to investigate. Jerome B. Wiss of the firm of J. Wiss & Sons, owners of the building, told them two, cables supporting the car had jumped from a roller, thus breaking control of the car. He said the elevator had been repaired by the Otis Elevator Company September 5 and that it had been unofficially examined at the time by Inspector Fiverson of the city Building Department. No inspector was available last night, so the detectives instructed Mr. Wiss to leave the elevator untouched until today.
Failure of safety devices to work properly is given as the cause of the accident by Superintendent O'Rourke of the Building Department. Any cable is likely to break in an elevator shaft, he said, but there are safety devices on most all carriers which are supposed to prevent the elevator car from falling. When it reaches a certain speed the car is supposed to be checked by dogs which stick out from the sides of the shaft and slow down the car. This appliances is even supposed to work, he said, when an operator tries to speed his car.
Mr. O'Rourke declared the Wiss company had been "penny wise and pound foolish" in the policy it had adopted in caring for its elevators. Much time and money has been spent in repairing at odd times, he said, when one general overhauling would have insured safety. He told of numerous complaints and inspections of the Wiss elevators. A test will be made of the other machine at the building this afternoon. Before it will be put in again it will be loaded with well and allowed to drop to test the devices.
F.B. West of the service department of the Otis Elevator Company decided today that the company had done work on the Wiss Building elevator in more than a year. He added that after the accident last night, the company had received an order to repair the elevators.
The car was a wreck after the accident. A heavy steel beam in the top had crashed part way through from the impact. The back of the carrier was split open, the sides had been stove. In and a socket in the bar at the top of the car was empty, showing where one cable had pulled out. The cement floor beneath the elevator-the bottom of the well-was broken from the crash, and the steel buffer spring and support had been driven some distance into the concrete bed.
The police learned from tenants of the Wiss building that the elevator had frequently been out of order and that some of them had refused to pay their full rentals until it was repaired properly. November 24, 1919, the tenants circulated a petition calling upon the owners to carry out their leasing contracts by giving proper elevator service.
It was stated at the time that one of the two elevators in the building had been out of commission for two weeks and the other was out of order intermittently. It was a week before this petition was circulated that one of the cars had dropped from the seventh floor to the cellar at a much greater speed than customary, shaking up passengers. The woman operator in charge at the time fainted and had to be taken home.
At another time the same elevator dropped from the second floor to the basement. No one was hurt. An official of the Wiss company said then that the car had merely slid because the brakes failed to work.