# Accident at Sheherazade Hotel



## hhaddad (Apr 14, 2010)

A lift with a group of 12 musicians fell from the 15 floor leaving 1 dead and 11 injured at the Sheherazade hotel in Agouza.


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## MaidenScotland (Jun 6, 2009)

How sad... but I thought this placed was closed to guests since the fire?
I do see lights on and people wandering around but I always thought it was security guards.

Is the place still for ladies of the night?


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## hhaddad (Apr 14, 2010)

MaidenScotland said:


> How sad... but I thought this placed was closed to guests since the fire?
> I do see lights on and people wandering around but I always thought it was security guards.
> 
> Is the place still for ladies of the night?


Probably but the piece I read in Al Ahram didn't say anything about that.


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## CatMandoo (Dec 16, 2011)

What a horrifying way to die. Tragic!


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## Whitedesert (Oct 9, 2011)

I seriously doubt that the lift(elevator) was been serviced by any lift company, and secondly I think that equipment in the shaft had been removed. When the cable on a lift snaps, and it goes beyound a certain speed, there is an automatic breaking system that engages and brings the car to a halt. Those must have been removed. This sounds like mothballed joint.


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## hhaddad (Apr 14, 2010)

Whitedesert said:


> I seriously doubt that the lift(elevator) was been serviced by any lift company, and secondly I think that equipment in the shaft had been removed. When the cable on a lift snaps, and it goes beyound a certain speed, there is an automatic breaking system that engages and brings the car to a halt. Those must have been removed. This sounds like mothballed joint.



I think some of you forget you in Egypt where secuity checks on equipment maintainance and servicing don't exist.
What your talking about is emerency brake"parachute"and if not serviced regulary won't work.


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## CatMandoo (Dec 16, 2011)

Well one of my biggest fears is elevators! The way some of them creak and groan and make all those noises..arggg...and seem to kind of "drop a little" almost like air turbulence in a plane...


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## MaidenScotland (Jun 6, 2009)

I have to say the lifts in my building are serviced every month and it takes them all day.. we have two personal lifts and one service.. Schiendler is the company that does it.. no complaints about their service other than the men leave a terrible mess of oily fingerprints all over the doors to the lift. I also have a dumb waiter which is serviced every month at a cost of 66 LE .. it has been this price for 10 years.. it takes him 5 minutes.


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## hurghadapat (Mar 26, 2010)

CatMandoo said:


> Well one of my biggest fears is elevators! The way some of them creak and groan and make all those noises..arggg...and seem to kind of "drop a little" almost like air turbulence in a plane...


Me too....only use them when absolutely necessary,and have been known to climb six flights of stairs rather than get in the lift.


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## ArabianNights (Jul 23, 2011)

This really freaks me out. Our elevator has had to be serviced quite a bit recently - there is always something that seems to go wrong with it. Once, it stopped completely between floors  I freaked out and then scanned my card again (which is needed to make it work) and pressed the button for my level. ThankGod it worked. The exposed wiring freak me out.


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## Whitedesert (Oct 9, 2011)

hhaddad said:


> I think some of you forget you in Egypt where secuity checks on equipment maintainance and servicing don't exist.
> What your talking about is emerency brake"parachute"and if not serviced regulary won't work.


 I did not forget anything. Even in Egypt the units are serviced more or less to international standards, but there has to be a maintenance contract in place. The equipment you describe is infact the secondary redundancy, I refered to the shunting blocks that engages ones the car travels over the rated metres per second allocated for the unit type (both in the software, if in place, or in the hardwired solid electronic card, where a BMS system is not installed). What I said was that in the case where a maintenance contract is in place the likelyhood of a unit falling is extremely unlikely.


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## hhaddad (Apr 14, 2010)

I understood what you were saying but here the don't understand maintainance contracts in most circumstances. Possibly in new builds they have them but have a look round at the lifts in public buildings here in Cairo. You'll find cabins with no doors doors falling off or held by a bit of string.I dread to think what the mechanical parts are like.
Also the maintainance of public transport seems to be non existant check the tyres of the bus you get to Sharm or Hurghada "highjet algouna or superjet" the tyres are mostly bald.
Or the next train you get if it has a/c and it's working it spits out dirt at all and sundry and the toilets just forget it.
The lift at the hotel was an old one and they overloaded it from what I've heard.


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## MaidenScotland (Jun 6, 2009)

I do know when I lived in the police building the lifts were barely maintained and have actually had the lift doors open only for there to be nothing but the shaft there.. breakdowns were common. I do not believe this was the fault of the lift company but of the management who would not pay to have them maintained as I said the building I am in has the lifts serviced monthly and they do a good job..


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## Whitedesert (Oct 9, 2011)

There are many apartment blocks in Maadi where the inner door is not present, (and I have seen them in other places) so you actually watch the external doors and floor spacings as you travel up or down. That is unnerving for most of us used to lifts having an inner door as well, but not really dangerous, unless of cause if you did something stupid, like stick your hand out there. Even though they are "old" in terms of model and year of manufacture, they are very much functional if maintained to the set standards of Mitsubishi, Kone, Schindler, etc,etc. I agree of cause that it is a matter of having the maintenance contract in place (which is compulsory by law, just by the way in Egypt, in terms of the Egyptian Occupational, Health and Safety Act. However, all lifts are designed with the two safety features installed as what we call technically "hidden equipment", which means it is equipment not expected to work, but when they do they must, even if the "system" i.e the lift installation are NOT maintained. They are therefore designed, and installed in such a way as to stay functional irrespective of how the overal equipment is maintained. That means your very bad looking, and badly maintained lift should still not fall when the cable breaks, for whatever the reason was (overloaded etc). It will fall if this emergency components were either interferred with, or partially removed, or completely removed. That is without a doubt what happened here.


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