Girl, two, caught in escalator

The Wanganui Fire Brigade rushed to Farmers' Victoria Ave department store yesterday morning when a toddler's hand was caught and trapped by an escalator conveyor.
Station officer Ed Buchan said the two-year-old girl had her hand caught by the escalator's rubber handrail at the point where it went back into the hidden part of the machine.
The escalator's safety mechanism kicked in and switched off the machine, but the young girl's hand was trapped.
She had to wait while emergency services were summoned and then while firemen removed a floor plate, switched the escalator's power off and used a handle to manually wind the conveyor backwards to free the toddler's hand.
"She was in quite a bit of pain," Mr Buchan said.
The Wanganui St John Ambulance Service also attended the incident and said the girl was left with bruising and swelling to her hand.
Mr Buchan said it was around the seventh time the brigade had been called to the store to deal with children caught by the escalator.
But Farmers chief operating officer Rod McDermott said he had no knowledge of previous incidents but would investigate.
Mr McDermott said the incident was an unfortunate one and had been upsetting for the victim and staff.
"I was informed of the incident when it happened, and it seems this was a case of a young child who was unattended, getting too close to the escalator and that's when it happened.
"The safety device for if a hand or a toe is caught made the escalator cut out."
Mr McDermott said the escalator was serviced by Schindlers, who didn't have a Wanganui base but would inspect the escalator today.
"All stores have escalators, so incidents like this do happen from time to time."
However, Mr McDermott said escalators had warnings and were OSH approved. In most cases incidents occurred when children were unattended.
"Our store team have no reason to feel embarrassed, but some are pretty upset," he said.
Mr McDermott said staff had spotted the child by the escalator.
"But you can't pick a child up nowadays, so they had to try and encourage her away from the escalator and told the auntie or mother.
"Unfortunately, there wasn't enough attention paid (by the family members)."
Mr McDermott said a child actually had to stick their hand into the escalator mechanism for it to get caught.
He said parents needed to supervise children and exercise common sense around escalators.
"It was just really unfortunate for this child, because they were not being supervised, to have an experience most of us would find pretty horrifying," Mr McDermott said.