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"  It must have been just like any other Friday night in the Ohio State University&amp;#039;s Stradley Hall dormitory: heading out for the evening to spend time with friends and get set for Saturday&amp;#039;s football game against Indiana. But for students living on the top floors of an 11-story high-rise, it doesn&amp;#039;t always make sense to use the stairs\u2014which must have been what students were thinking when, at 11:20 p.m. one week ago, two dozen of them packed in like sardines on Stradley Hall&amp;#039;s Elevator No. 2. According to authorities, that&amp;#039;s when the elevator\u2014doors still open\u2014unexpectedly began to descend from the third floor, pinning freshman Andrew Polakowski\u2014the last passenger in\u2014between the top of the elevator door and the third-floor lobby floor as he tried to escape. Polakowski suffered chest and abdominal injuries and died almost immediately of mechanical asphyxia (the inability to breathe due to external pressure on the chest), Franklin County Coroner Bradley Lewis told The Associated Press. He was 18. Investigations are ongoing, but documents, police reports, building specifications and expert opinions provide an initial analysis of what went wrong in the deadly fall of Elevator No. 2. Inspection reports obtained by Popular Mechanics from the Ohio State Department of Commerce show that Stradley Hall&amp;#039;s elevator was a passenger traction model originally manufactured and maintained by Otis Elevator Co., with a 2,500-lb. capacity. But authorities say that Elevator No. 2 was carrying 24 passengers, which, assuming a weight of 150 lbs. per person, can equal almost 50 percent more than the cab&amp;#039;s rated weight maximum. &amp;quot;At a certain point, there&amp;#039;s only so much the system can handle,&amp;quot; says Chip Nyborg, chairman of the Codes and Standards Committee for the National Association of Elevator Contractors and president of Tri-State Elevator (which was not involved in the incident). &amp;quot;Then the elevator&amp;#039;s going to slide through the brake. [Under normal circumstances], the safety should set and stop [the elevator]. But I suppose there&amp;#039;s a possibility that if there&amp;#039;s too much weight, the safety wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to hold it.&amp;quot; Standard traction elevators like the one in Stradley Hall run on steel cables, with the cab on one end and a counterweight on the other, along a traction sheave that uses friction to control the brake. A popular model, the traction elevators also comes equipped with a &amp;quot;governor&amp;quot;\u2014a safety device that, according to Nyborg, stops a spinning flyball\u2014and the elevator car\u2014from moving when they reach a certain speed. The dormitory elevator, originally installed when the residence hall was built in 1959, received routine maintenance and yearly safety inspections by the state of Ohio, according to Shelly Hoffman, an OSU spokesperson. Inspection reports indicate that the elevator passed its last full-load test (taken every five years) in August 2003, but its static brakes failed in a test performed Oct. 23. A static brake holds an elevator at the floor, then stops the car when it settles on the floor. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re tested with the full elevator load plus 25 percent of the rated capacity to make sure the elevator will hold above and beyond its capacity,&amp;quot; says Nyborg. However, he added, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s kind of like taking your car to get inspected. They check to see if your lights and your wipers work. There&amp;#039;s nothing to say that, a week later, you won&amp;#039;t have a bad wiper blade or blow out a headlight. What you&amp;#039;re saying is, at one point in time\u2014at the time of the test\u2014you had a condition that was good or bad.&amp;quot; But, &amp;quot;you cannot assume the elevator wasn&amp;#039;t working properly. It sounds like it was, in essence, severely abused,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It seems almost more like the elevator was pushed beyond its engineered limits.&amp;quot; During a press conference Wednesday, OSU&amp;#039;s interim Vice President for Student Affairs, Richard A. Hollingsworth, outlined steps OSU has taken in the wake of the tragedy and its plans to ensure the safety of the school&amp;#039;s students. All elevators on campus have been subjected to full-load tests since the accidentThe Ohio State incident, with its shock on campus and week on the TV news cycle, has suddenly brought the issue of elevator safety to the forefront. Several new technologies are in the works to make elevators safer, with the industry monitoring the movement of elevators at landings since 2000. &amp;quot;If the elevator starts to move a pre-determined distance away from the landing, the emergency braking system on the elevator will be set to stop the elevator from moving,&amp;quot; says Ed Donaghue, spokeperson for National Elevator Industry, Inc. While Donaghue declined to comment on the OSU incident, he offered some general elevator safety tips:    Watch what you&amp;#039;re doing when entering and exiting a car because, particularly with older elevators, the cab might not be level with the landing.  Don&amp;#039;t try to stop an elevator&amp;#039;s doors from closing, or you could get stuck. &amp;quot;[People] assume that you can stick your hand in and the doors will register that and respond,&amp;quot; says Donoghue.   Check the capacity of the elevator, which can be found on a plaque either on the operating station or above it. If you find yourself stuck in an elevator, don&amp;#039;t panic, and don&amp;#039;t try to get out. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re safe in the car,&amp;quot; Donoghue insists. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t try to pull the doors open and get out. A lot of accidents happen when people try to self-evacuate from a stalled elevator that&amp;#039;s not at the landing.&amp;quot;   For more information on elevator safety, click here. \u2013Erin McCarthy UPDATE: According to Ohio State student newspaper, which sites a report released by the Ohio Department of Commerce, Stradley Hall&amp;#039;s Elevator No. 2 suffered a major brake failure and might have fallen even if it hadn&amp;#039;t been overweight. The elevator failed tests performed at 100 percent capacity on Oct. 23, going through the brake, traveling into the pit of the elevator shaft and hitting the buffers, which soften the impact of a falling elevator. Counterweights--like those in red on this illustration based on the Taipei 101 skyscrapers elevator--are supposed to offset the weight of the cab.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a4341/4200432/>