If you live or work in a Tokyo in a high rise building, here is a little something to keep you up nights.
The Mori Building Company has revealed that the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Niigata Prefecture last October snapped a 1-centimeter cable in one of the 67 elevators of the Mori Tower complex in Tokyo. Company officials said there was no danger of the elevator falling, however, since there are a total of eight cables supporting it.
The elevator was one of six that failed to stop when the earthquake first hit, causing to bang against the walls of its shaft and come to a stop. The six elevators did not stop when the earthquake hit because their sensors could not detect long-oscillation seismic waves.
EEK!!!! And they’re just leaving it like that?!?!?!??!
Thanks, just another reason not to go out of the house for anything. Airplanes fall from the sky and crash, elevators go boom, typhoons wreak havoc, floods flood everyone, cars crash into kids, crazies carry fruit knives, and now this…… I think Voltaire said it best: if you don’t want anything bad to happen to you, he wrote in Candide, it is best not to leave your bedroom at all….
All passenger elevators are based on Otis’s 19th century safety elevator design, which prevents falling even if all the cables snap. But knowing that kind of spoils all the fun.