电梯中暗藏隐患 乘坐时需谨慎

The next time you step on an escalator, be careful. It can be more dangerous than you might think. Consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen is here this morning with the results of an Early Show investigation. Good morning.

Good morning, Maggie. Experts say escalators should be inspected for safety twice a year, but in many cases, that is not happening. In a hidden camera investigation, we went out with an inspector and found some escalators that he called "disaster waiting to happen".

Six-year-old Madeline Dahm was just a toddler when a horrified accident changed her life.

"My foot was just pulled into the side of an escalator."

She was riding this escalator with her dad at a mall in Minneapolis when suddenly her foot was sucked in to the space between the step and the side panel.

"I felt a tug at my arm, at which point Madeline screamed. And I quickly looked down and I saw what was left of her shoe in the escalator."

Madeline's sandal was shredded. Four of her toes were crushed and tendonsalong the top of her foot were severed.

"It was horrible, I mean, her foot was bad, it was so bad."

The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates 11,000 people a year are injured and treated in emergency rooms because of escalator-related accidents. Nearly a quarter of them are children.

"People just don't realize the hidden danger of an escalator."

Kevin Doherty is a certified escalator and elevator safety inspector.

"Just how bad can escalator injuries be?"

"In a word, devastating. Human flesh stands no chance against a moving escalator."

There are so federal regulations mandating escalators being inspected. It's left to states, towns and local municipalities.

"Our escalators being checked enough?"

"In my opinion, absolutely not, absolutely not."

With hidden cameras rolling, we had Doherty inspect escalators at a mall, a train station and a movie theater in New York city. The escalators at the mall and the train station were in good shape, but the movie theater was a different story.

"If you were to give that facility a grade for me?"

"F-minus."

"That bad?"

"That bad, that bad."

Here is why. This narrow escalator had steps with gaping holes.

"What could happen to somebody if they are got caught in that hole that we saw?"

"That opening is big enough to fit a child's arm inside of it. It'd take his arm right off at the elbow. I can't emphasize how severe, how dangerous that condition is."

This escalator had a loose side panel.

"You could pull it out and actually see the chain moving that's driving the escalator while you are on it."

On this escalator, we fit a pencil between the step and the side.

Doherty says it you can fit more than the tip of that pencil in that space the gap is too big.

"Shoelace gets caught in there, and that would be followed by the sneaker, and that would be followed by the foot that the sneaker is attached to."

"How is school?"

As for Madeline Dahm, doctors may manage to save her foot, but she still faces more surgeries. Her family now avoids using escalators.

"I never thought in a million years it would happen. And it did."

"It's not a toy. It's a serious piece of equipment, and it has no feelings. It's cold, it's metal. It will suck you in."

And we would like to memtion that we informed the manager at the movie theater about the safety hazards on the escalators that day. When we stopped back a week later, the escalators were still in operation. So we called the corporate headquarters to report the problem. Those problems have now been fixed. And our experts say the escalators should be shut down on that very day.

All right, thank you so much, Susan.