HeraldLive reports that all five lifts at the Mount Road police station in Port Elizabeth have been shut down after a lift plummeted four storeys there on Wednesday afternoon.  

On Thursday, inspectors from the departments of labour and public works were at the station conducting an investigation into what happened, but it remains unknown why the lift’s emergency brakes failed and why it fell to the ground floor.  A preliminary investigation showed that no cable had snapped in the lift shaft and that routine monthly maintenance checks had been done.  “Clearly something went wrong but what it is we do not know yet,” an investigator said.  Seven people – four clerks and three police officials, most of them from the Criminal Record Centre division – were in the lift when it fell to the ground.  Three of them have been discharged from hospital, with four still in hospital with leg fractures.

• Read this report by Gareth Wilson in full at HeraldLive

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