July 2007

Landquart; Not far from the source of the Rhine sits the Benedictine monastery Disentis. It was founded around 720 AD and is one of the oldest monasteries in Switzerland. The twin-towered minster and the large convent building attached to it dominate the skyline of the village of Disentis.

No efforts are spared in adapting the monastery to meet the requirements of modern day life. “We have many ongoing building sites in the monastery“ stated Brother Niklaus Schwegler, responsible for its upkeep. One of these “building sites“ are the lift systems. The lifts were installed about 40 years ago and are no longer up to today’s safety standards.
The lift cabins do not have inner doors which means that there is a gap between the cabin and the shaft wall in which limbs or objects could get jammed while the lift is moving. Brother Niklaus showed his long black habit: “This could possibly get caught in the gap.“ 

Quite recently a pupil had an accident as he was travelling with his teacher in the lift while transporting metal profiles. The profiles were just a little longer than the lift cabin so, unconscious of the dangers this presented, they tried to place the profiles diagonally in the cabin. The result was as could have been predicted: the profiles shifted while the lift was moving and touched the shaft wall. The profiles in the cabin got wedged and injured one of the pupil’s feet. The accident only caused slight injury according to Brother Niklaus.

 
Apart from this one incident it appears as if a guardian angel has been accompanying users of the lift until now. Fortu-nately there have been no severe accidents todate. However, the potential risk has been recognized. The lifts must be made more safe.

The first lift has already fitted out with the accident preven-tion light curtain cegard/Lift from CEDES. The light curtain recognises immediately if someone or an object is too close to the gap between the lift cabin and the shaft wall and stops the lift moving before any danger arises. “Retrofitting the lift cabin with an inner door was not an option for us since we would have had to make too many deductions in the usable area of the lift and also the cargo load,“ explained Brother Niklaus.