Elevator permits left to expire without maintenance updates

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After fiddling with the elevator door for 4 minutes, officer Esqueda was successful in freeing Montano.

This is not the first time that students have been stuck inside elevators on campus.

“Surprisingly it’s pretty common, we have issues particularly with the external elevators, like in the parking areas, those are more problematic,” Esqueda said.

Kim has also dealt with with elevator issues on campus.

“It’s been maybe at least two years but it has happened before,” Kim said.

The Facilities Planning and Services Department opted to keep the elevator open for use for the time being.

“Our facilities department kind of takes the lead on that kind of stuff and even they are, as you can see, kind of hands off with it,” Esqueda said. “They want to defer it to the elevator company so if they tell us to shut it down we’ll shut it down.”

Robert Brobst, assistant director of the facilities department, said that the college switched companies from Fujitec America to TK Elevator GmbH two years ago and then to Elevators Etc. four months ago.

The permit of the Humanities Building elevator states that it expired in June of 2022 and was last inspected in June of 2021.

“As far as just elevator issues, [they happen] on a monthly basis,” Esqueda said. “As far as someone being in it, that doesn’t happen particularly often.”