Council gets a lift
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:47 pm
When council officials visited residents at a tower block to reassure them about a temperamental lift, there was only one way to do it.
Unfortunately, the show of faith by the six occupants - including a pregnant woman - backfired when they got stuck a couple of floors from the top.
After much fruitless jabbing of buttons, an emergency call was put through to firefighters to come to their aid.
The fire crew tried to wedge the lift open at Brooke House in Basildon, Essex, and shouted suggestions to those inside.
Meanwhile, red-faced colleagues on the other side of the doors made frantic phone calls to check those imprisoned in the lift were all right.
But the farce deepened when it suddenly sprang back into life, carrying the delegation down to the ground floor and then back up to the 12th floor.
At this point the doors opened, allowing the five council officials and an Essex Fire Service safety officer to scramble out after 30-minutes of drama.
The group took to the stairs to complete their trip to see residents as part of a community safety event.
The irony of the situation was not lost those living in the Grade II-listed building, who have made numerous complaints about the lift breaking down.
Amber Cooper, 30, who lives there with her five-year-old son, Jamie, said: ‘We have put up with this all the time so it’s good for the council to see first-hand what it’s like.
‘It’s a total nightmare. My mum is disabled, so she struggles to get to me when the lifts aren’t working.’ Another resident, a woman in her 50s, added: ‘You have to laugh as you really couldn’t make it up.
‘At least now these people can see what we have to put up with.’
