Perianne Hopper says it will be a while before she rides another elevator on campus. Last weekend upon returning to her building from a visit home, she said she and her boyfriend had a 24-case of bottled water, luggage and her book bag to carry to her fifth-floor dorm room. When her boyfriend asked her if she was going to make them take the stairs, she said she told him, "Yes, we are taking the stairs. I don't want to worry about being stuck."
Hopper and another student were trapped in an elevator for 25 minutes last month in Woodworth Hall when the elevator's motor caught fire. Hopper and the other student got out of the elevator safely but not without reporting some lasting fears.
"I thought I was going to die in there," she said.
Since then, Hopper said elevator repair workers have been in the building working on the elevator every day. Last Wednesday was the first day it was working.
Last month's incident, however, has made Hopper and others reluctant to use on-campus elevators.
Between Jan. 1 and April 3, university police took 36 calls from people stuck in elevators. At first glance, that might seem like a high number, but Radoica Rutovic, Ball State's facilities assessment coordinator, said that's not an unusual number.
"We're on a normal basis," he said. "Considering how many students we have, how much use (the elevators) get."
He said an elevator in a larger building could make as many as 20,000 runs a day. Multiply that by the number of days in a year, he said, and 36 calls for 100 elevators on campus is "not bad."
He also said of those calls, more than half the trapped passengers safely exit on their own before police officers arrive because the elevator doors eventually open.
Wilson Carter, field supervisor for Indiana's Elevator Safety Division, said most elevator problems on college campuses are caused by vandalism. Carter said he built elevators for 30 years and is now in charge of the team of 15 state elevator inspectors responsible for more than 16,000 elevators as well as amusement rides in Indiana.
"Students think they're not working, and they'll kick the door," he said.
Elevator malfunction, he said, is not usually caused by faulty manufacturing or maintenance.
"I just can't put it all on the elevators," he said.
Carter said elevators are one of the safest transportation modes.
Rutovic cited an example of vandalism from March 1999 when a group of students got in an elevator in the Cooper building and deliberately overloaded it. He said they jumped up and down trying to disable the elevator, causing $8,300 in damage.
"What those students didn't realize was that ... when they damage elevators and put them out of work, handicap students can't get to class," he said.
The state conducts inspections of elevators, but companies, as well as universities, can hire their own mechanics to check elevators as often as they want. Troublesome elevators on Ball State's campus, such as those in Bracken Library, are inspected quarterly by the university's contract elevator mechanics.
Carter said because of his small staff, his state inspection division has recently changed to risk-based inspections, meaning they give priority to inspecting older elevators while newer ones are inspected every other year. He said he has seen elevators in use more than 80 years if they are well maintained.
Rutovic said all of Ball State's elevators, regardless of age, are inspected annually by the state.
Rutovic and Jim Lowe, director of engineering, said Ball State has a full maintenance contract with two elevator journeymen who have been through five-year apprenticeships, special training and have passed a series of tests before they were certified by their national labor association. Ball State's journeymen are also Quality Elevator Inspectors (QEI-certified), which is an industry-regulated quality certification.
A full maintenance contract, Rutovic said, means if anything goes wrong with an elevator on campus, the contractors are responsible for repairs. Ball State pays the contract company, and the company is responsible for all parts and labor. He said this gives the contract company an incentive to stay on top of maintenance.
"They make it work, or it will cost the company," he said.
During regular campus hours and during special times, such as residence hall move-in and move-out, the elevator mechanics are on campus and able to respond to calls within minutes. After hours, the mechanics have one hour to respond when called to campus.
"If they don't, we have some conversation with them," Lowe said. "We can't have that."
Of the 36 elevator problem calls to University Police so far this semester, one third of them have been reported from Bracken Library. Rutovic said his office recently hired a specialist to investigate the continual problems at Bracken. He said they found evidence of tampering with elevator equipment and have talked about having security cameras installed throughout the campus.
Rutovic said before cameras were installed to monitor elevators in residence halls, the number of calls of people being stuck in elevators was much higher. He said when students kick the doors, they trigger safety mechanisms that cause the elevators to "go into default," which is a safety feature that halts the elevator until the mechanic arrives.
He said last summer two students were stuck in an elevator for almost two hours. They were in a closed section of a dormitory building and tried to use an elevator that had not been in operation for several weeks. They were trapped in an elevator with no emergency call phone, and the emergency alarm button works only when others are within earshot of the alarm. The students were eventually able to use a cell phone to call for help.
"They were in a place where they shouldn't have been," Rutovic said.
He said after that incident, however, telephones were installed in passenger elevators in all but two residence buildings on campus. Telephones will be installed in the passenger cars in Johnson A and Johnson B within a couple of weeks.
"We really try to do everything right," he said. "I do everything I can possibly do to make sure those elevators are working."
Rutovic carries with him a two-way radio so he can monitor all elevator-related calls. He is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said.
They also work with local public safety officials. Lowe said they trained Muncie Fire Department on how to use the special keys that open elevators during an emergency.
"That's why those girls got out quickly," he said of Hopper and her friend who were stuck in a smoke-filled elevator last month.
Rutovic said his office, Facilities Planning and Management, is working to train university police on elevator safety as well.
Gene Burton, director of public safety at Ball State, said when a call comes in about a person being stuck in an elevator, an officer goes to the scene and checks to make sure the people inside are safe. If the people inside are safe, they call elevator maintenance. The officer will not damage the elevator if the person is in no danger, but he or she will stay with the elevator until the person is freed.
Serious elevator problems are rare on campus, said Rutovic, Lowe and Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president of facilities planning and management.
"My impression is on a campus of this size ... that's not a large amount," Kenyon said of the 36 calls this semester.
The problem arises when one story travels around campus and that's all people remember, Rutovic said. Rutovic also said miscommunication causes a lot of problems.
"Things can get blown out of proportion," Rutovic said.
Hopper said although she will not ride in an elevator in the near future, she realizes her experience last month was just an accident and could have happened to anybody. She is thankful she got out safely.
"My mom nominated the guy who came down the elevator shaft for me for Anderson Hero of the Year," she said. "I didn't even tell him thank you."
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