Child’s elevator accident figured I’d share

Had this happen today at our office which has a pretty standard elevator, recently inspected, nothing out of the ordinary has really ever happened with it in it’s 20 years or so of service until my 5yo today. Of course.

She pressed the button to call the elevator, we were headed up to my office, and as the doors were opening the started walking through into the empty elevator.

She tripped (we think,) braced by grabbing the opening door, and her fingers were just small enough to get wedged into the elevator door which pulled them about an inch and a half into the well.

She was unable to extract her left hand by herself and I was worried that when the elevator doors decided to open there might end up being something sharp that would cut her, so I put my head or shoulder (don’t remember at this point,) on the sensor bar that tells when the elevator doors are closing on something and quickly pulled her hands straight out.

While her fingers were only trapped there for realistically 8-10 seconds they were white. We ran to the bathroom, ran some cold water on her hands, and saw that the extent of the damage was a small scrape and some being scared.

I’ve never heard of elevators as a finger-trapping device. It was hard, took a trip/slip, dive forward, grab at the perfect time to make this happen but it did. Maggie was scared, still is a bit, but the general thing we’ve taken away is to be more careful when stepping into an elevator and try and not touch the doors for any reason.

Scary, we didn’t get majorly hurt, looking at the internet I now know that you can, however, lose fingers that way. Learn something new.