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A Bulawayo woman trapped in an elevator, and the technician trying to rescue her, plunged to their deaths from the eighth floor of Bulawayo’s tallest building, the National Railways of Zimbabwe headquarters, on Friday at around 4pm only to be discovered a full 24 hours later on Saturday.
The technician from Schindler Elevator Services was assisting the trapped woman, an NRZ accountant. Police and the Bulawayo Fire Brigade worked for close to three hours to retrieve the victims’ bodies from the elevator shaft, only getting the job done around 7pm last night.
It is the tallest building in Bulawayo’s CBD with 23 floors housing over 500 employees.
National police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba said, “We can confirm that two people died (Friday) after an elevator at the NRZ headquarters jammed. A woman was trapped inside the elevator.
“The parastatal called a technician to look into the fault after that we believed he tried to pull her out but was overpowered because the woman was of heavy built.
‘‘The two subsequently fell into the shaft leading to their deaths. It is a very sad occurrence and I would want to console the families of the deceased.”
Details of the accident and how it occurred were still sketchy last night but sources at NRZ told our Bulawayo Bureau that the elevator developed a fault and trapped the woman at around 4pm on Friday.
Schindler tasked another technician at around 4pm yesterday to follow up on his colleague, only to discover that he and the woman had died. Relatives of the deceased wailed as police and the Fire Brigade retrieved the bodies.
NRZ acting general manager Mr Lewis Mukwada said, “It was a very unfortunate accident.
Government inspectors will be coming to carry out a full-scale investigation on Monday.”
Zimbabwe Amalgamated Workers Union president Mr Kumurai Moyo said the incident was tragic.
National Social Security Authority acting director for occupational health and safety Mr Benjamin Mutetwa added: “We have been informed about the accident but the details are still sketchy at the moment. We will be sending a team of our officers to conduct an investigation after which I will be able to give you a full comment.” The mishap comes a few months after a technician died and three others were injured when an elevator at Chaminuka Building in Harare broke loose and plunged from the ninth to the fourth floor.
Online Reporter