

Seriously, we got nothing. Another escalator accident occurred yesterday for roughly the billionth time in China in the past couple of months with firefighters successfully managing to rescue a 3-year-old girl who got her left arm stuck inside an escalator at a supermarket in the suburbs of Chongqing.

The accident occurred at around 4pm yesterday in a supermarket in Xiushan district on the outskirts of Chongqing. The supermarket manager told reporters that his staff heard frantic cries for help and rushed to the escalator and immediately stopped it. However, they were unable to help to pry open a big enough gap in the escalator to rescue the little girl and so called emergency services for help. In the meantime, the girl’s grandmother held the frigthened and sobbing child tight and tried to calm her down, according to Sina News.



It took around 40 minutes before firefighters were finally able to free the 3-year-old’s arm from the escalator. Medical personnel were waiting at the scene to immediately transport her to the hospital for treatment. Doctors say that her arm suffered no serious damage from the accident.

Later, supermarket managers watched surveillance footage to see what had happened. They found that while riding the escalator down, the girl’s grandmother had taken her eyes off her granddaughter for just a moment, but in that moment the child slipped, fell and got her arm jammed in the side of the escalator.



We had a blessed few weeks of quiet recently, but tragedy almost struck again earlier this week when a woman in Shenyang just managed to escape after the escalator she was riding suddenly malfunctioned.

While this week’s incidents haven’t resulted in any serious injury (yet), they aren’t likely to do much to quell public safety concerns following a spate of reports involving faulty escalators in recent weeks. In the horrific July 26 case, the victim had been traveling up the escalator when a metal plate gave in beneath her. She managed to push her young son to safety before getting sucked into the machinery.

Just two days later, a toddler was injured when his arm got trapped inside an escalator at a mall in Guangxi, and on August 1, a 35-year-old cleaner got stuck in an escalator at a Shanghai mall, resulting in his leg being amputated.

Less severe accidents involving escalators across the country have kept mall-goers on high alert and, as tragedies sometimes do, inspired a meme.

In the wake of the news reports, the Shanghai Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau carried out an inspection and ordered the “indefinite suspension” of 33 machines in the city alone.

At least two of the escalators involved in recent accidents were manufactured by the firm Shanghai Mitsubishi. It’s unclear which company produced the escalator in this most recent case.

Please, ride carefully!

[Images via Sina]

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