5-year-old boy dies after arm gets trapped in travelator at Hokkaido ski resort
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The emergency function, designed to automatically stop the travelator if a foreign object gets caught, had worked during a routine inspection earlier in the day.
PHOTO: KYODO NEWS
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SAPPORO – A five-year-old boy died after his right arm got trapped in a moving walkway at a resort in northern Japan on Dec 28, the local authorities said.
Firefighters said they received an emergency call from the boy’s mother at about 10am local time (9am Singapore time) saying that the boy was trapped on the Asari Ski Resort’s autowalk in Otaru, Hokkaido.
The boy fell as he was trying to get off the walkway, which connects the facility’s carpark and the ski slope, according to local police and firefighters. The travelator, which moves upslope, has no handrail.
Officials at the resort told Kyodo News that the walkway’s emergency stop function did not operate automatically when the child got trapped, prompting his mother to press the stop button.
The emergency function, designed to automatically stop the travelator if a foreign object gets caught, had worked during a routine inspection earlier in the day, the officials said.
As staff at the facility were unable to free the boy, emergency workers dismantled part of the equipment to free him, the officials said.
The boy was reportedly unconscious when he was rushed to hospital. Details about his injuries were not immediately revealed by the authorities, but the Otaru division of the Hokkaido prefectural police said on Dec 30 that he had died from asphyxiation.
A representative of the resort apologised for the accident, pledging to determine the cause, and take measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
The police and the ski resort said the conveyor belt-style walkway, installed about six years ago, is around 30m long, with a belt width of approximately 60cm.
The ski resort remained open after the accident, while the walkway was shut down.
A couple in their 40s who were passing by near the site said they heard someone believed to be connected to the boy repeatedly shouting words of encouragement from inside an area cordoned off with blue tape.
A man in his 70s, who said he often visits the ski resort, said there are several points on the travelator where the slope changes and the belt shakes, adding that he himself had stumbled there before and he had thought it was dangerous. KYODO NEWS / THE STRAITS TIMES
