How to prevent an accident in an elevator: what residents need to remember

On Wednesday, April 28, a tragic incident happened in Odesa: a freight elevator with 8 people inside fell in a building on Marshala Hovorova Street; all passengers were hospitalized. Due to the incident, the police opened a criminal proceeding, but such situations may become common in Ukraine. Rubryka found out why, what to do with it, and who should repair and replace the elevators.

In Ukraine today there are about 86 thousand passenger lifts. Of these, 24 thousand need modernizing, and almost 9 thousand are in critical condition. For example, in Kyiv, there are more than 22 thousand elevators, of which 10 thousand should already be "retired," since their service life of 25 years has long expired. Thanks to the economic and social development program, 200 elevators are due to be repaired this year. In Lviv, 95% of the lifts are worn out, 57 of them are going to be brought back to life this year. In Odesa, the program is scheduled until 2020. During this period, the elevators will be replaced and modernized for UAH 204 million 810 thousand.

The elevator industry is getting older every year. The number of elevators that have fulfilled the standard period of their safe operation (25 years) is increasing faster than new modern elevators appear. Today the elevator industry in Ukraine is in deep crisis. Almost 60% of elevators have exhausted their technical resource of safe operation, the legislative and regulatory base is imperfect, the quality of maintenance of elevators is very low, there's a shortage of qualified personnel, the level of elevator dispatching decreases every year, which has decreased by 20% over the past 25 years.

All this is due to the lack of both financial resources for the repair and replacement of elevators and a qualified centralized, purposeful development of the entire industry. Earlier, back in the early 1990s, there was a system, the production association "Ukrlift," which solved many issues in the elevator industry, both methodological and production nature, and also conducted training and advanced training of employees of the elevator industry. In fact, the Ukrlift association solved all issues in the elevator industry. Unfortunately, there is no such organization in Ukraine today.