I have lost count of how many times I have heard this from homeowners or commercial property owners! As an owner of a specialist lift maintenance company, full disclosure, Melbourne Elevators, the ignorance displayed and lack of common-sense safety concerns and government and insurance requirements is simply astounding!

When our company is engaged to assess a lift to include in our maintenance portfolio, one of the first things we check is the operation and type of phone system in the lift.
Every time we perform maintenance on a lift the phone check is a documented item sent to the person/s responsible for the lift. Since the creation of lifts to move people in buildings an essential piece of equipment in the lift cabin has been the emergency phone or an employed lift attendant.

For all lifts installed in buildings that are not a private home, they are viewed as commercial lifts. There are clear WorkSafe requirements to have an operating emergency phone in every lift. Worksafe, Insurers and the Coroner will want to see fully documented maintenance records in event of injury or death relating to a lift. The owner of a property is viewed, by law, as the one responsible for the safe maintenance of the lift and its safe operation. Some argue that lift maintenance doesn’t matter as the lift is low use. Even low use lifts can still trap people such as clearers after ours or a manger working back late on a Friday. Being stuck in a lift over night or for a couple of days in hot weather can lead to death or major trauma!

Home owners often do not care or do not understand how essential lift phones are. Home owners often say “I’ll just keep my moble on me”, what happens if you forget the mobile, its flat or doesn’t work in the basement? Most of the deaths I am aware of, as a result of no emergency phones, have occurred in private homes. I can’t think of many ways worse to die than trapped in a lift and dying of thirst over many days. The following article is one of many you can find with a quick Google search:

 

Husband and wife Sherwood and Caroline Wadsworth die in stuck lift

AN ELDERLY couple have died trapped in a lift at their US home after it got stuck between floors.

Sherwood and Caroline Wadsworth, aged 90 and 89, had no way to call for help as temperatures rose and finally died from heat exhaustion in the closet-sized lift.

Police in Georgia estimate they had been dead at least four days before a newspaper deliverer called 911 out of concern that papers had piled up by their garage. Officers found the lift was stuck between the home's second and third floor and discovered the bodies lying in a foetal position, facing each other.

There was no phone in the elevator, leaving the couple unable to call for help, said Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering.

"It's just tragic," he said. "We all know one day we're going to die. This is one of those horrible ones where you're stuck somewhere." He said it was still unclear precisely when the Wadsworths became trapped in the elevator and autopsies were unable to determine exactly how long the couple had been dead. But investigators believed the couple died at least four days before their bodies were found.

 

I trust that this very simple and brief article makes it clear that all lift owners are responsible for having working emergency phones in their lifts.

An operating emergency phone is essential, not optional!
A thought to bear in mind is that if you can afford a lift you can afford a working lift phone...

A standard document we sent to lift owners during the latest upgrades to NBN and 4G may be useful in understanding how lift phone systems work and why they are expensive.

Click to View the Document

Published: April 09, 2026