After the recent lift collapse at Matunga, which took five lives, the alleged free fall of a lift in Andheri has got the residents worried; especially, because this was not a service lift of an under-construction building.
After the recent lift collapse at Matunga, which took five lives, the alleged free fall of a lift in Andheri has got the residents worried; especially, because this was not a service lift of an under-construction building.
Instead it was located in the extremely posh Oberoi Springs society at Lokhandwala, which houses several Bollywood personalities.
The deputy general manager of Mistubishi ETA MELCO, the company which has installed the lifts, confirmed receiving a complaint regarding the same from the society on Saturday.
“Our technicians were informed during their visit to the society on Saturday that the P7 and P8 lifts in B-wing did not seem to be functioning properly. However, it will be too early to conclude that it was a free fall,” said Sunil Kulkarni.
The three wings in Oberoi Spring Society are home to several Bollywood celebrities, including Farhan Akhtar, Prachi Desai, Ganesh Acharya, Kashmera Shah and Anand Raj Anand.
Bobby Deol and Akshay Kumar are also said to have booked their flats in this society but are yet to shift.
DNA visited the society on Monday where the buzz about the lift’s free fall seemed fresh in discussions among some residents as well as the society’s staff.
However, Prakash Mirpuri, the chairman of the society, called it a mere perception.
“We have been assured by ETA Melco Engineering Pvt Ltd, (the company that installs and maintains Mitsubishi Elevators in India) that the lifts installed in our complex are absolutely safe to use and they have further told us that the recent episode that you refer to was the result of a software malfunction, which is being rectified. Safety is paramount for us,” Mirpuri clarified.
Reiterating Mirpuri’s version was the explanation given by Kulkarni. “Though we have not reached a conclusion, as of now, prima facie, we think it is a software problem which led to call cancellation. We have set up a team of four people to maintain a log and check if there is a problem of call cancellation in the lift,” said Kulkarni.
He added, “According to what we have been told, some resident booked a call from the 11th floor to the ground floor. The lift did not respond to the calls of the lower floors and went straight down to the ground floor. The resident also seems to have said that the lift went down very fast but this is a high-speed lift and it came down at its regular speed, which is 2.3m per second. Admittedly, for a layman that would be too fast.”
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