Danger stalks mall escalators

Danger stalks mall escalators
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Camera footage taken barely a minute before Aahan fell from the fourth floor shows a happy carefree 6-year-old waiting to get inside the theatre and watch a movie.

The last of the footage shows Aahan edging dangerously close to the gap between the railing and the escalator, while talking to his cousins and his mother standing close by, unaware of the horror that lay waiting.

A staggering 75,000-80,000 people throng Garuda Mall on Magrath road every weekend. It can be a challenge to negotiate your way through the crowds on the different floors, on the escalators and the elevators. It is easy to lose sight of kids in this melee.

The fourth floor which was witness to young Aahan’s death is another packed floor with the Inox theatre and the Scary House, situated next to each other.

Just as this reporter was being shown the scene of the accident by the security guards of the mall, a child barely four years old jumped onto the escalator in an unnerving replay of Aahan’s accident.

An alert security guard caught the child in time and handed him over to the parents who were unaware of the accident that had taken place a couple of hours earlier.

Security guards on the floor say that their primary duty is to answer queries, direct people and make sure children stay off the railings.

Most of the time they are pulling away kids jumping off and on the escalators. One guard said: “It is very difficult to make them understand how dangerous this is. Often we have to face the parents’ wrath for pulling the kids away from the railing. They think we are treating the child harshly.”

Interestingly enough, only one security guard is posted on the fourth floor of the mall, which is milling with kids running around the place.

Even adults teeter on the escalators, which are relatively new in Indian buildings.

In hindsight, the space between the escalator and the railing through which Aahan fell through, measures about three quarters of a feet.

Space that even slightly built adults can fall through, given the propellant speed of the escalator railing.