You've been to these conventions and otaku events where there's way too many people in attendance, right? When you're one of the "too many" on an escalator, don't you sometimes wonder if the thing will just break under your feet?
Well, that finally happened. At Tokyo's Wonder Fest it seems that the escalator gave up working after too many people were piled onto it, and just like I've always imagined, people came tumbling down on top of each other. The news reports say that 10 people were injured.
In the above video, you can see the crushing action. Watch as the camera zooms in on a guy that bails out from the side. That would have been me.
Check out more video after the jump. Thank God for phone cameras!
This makes me think of Otakon. Sure, Otakon does not have escalators as big as the ones in Odaiba, but they still have fairly decent sized ones, and they're often packed. I'll be ready to bail from the side this weekend!
Bonus: Let's play Spot the Gaijin in the above video!
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is it the guy with black hair and the beard thats gaijin? Man that sucks though I mean you think the excalatewrs would be able to hold that kind of weight guesss not.
This is terrible. I forsee more "escalator b*tches"--- women who volunteer at cons assigned to shout at other people not to crowd or mess around escalators during cons.
well someone is prolly gonna get sued for making a poor escalator but hey: maybe that escalator was only made to carry average sized people at the time and the new over-weight trend was the one that dealt the final blow
But yeah, those things are designed to carry a certain level of buffer weight over the recommended level, but with that many people crammed on, come on....that was practically ASKING for this sorta thing to happen.
Hm. From all the press this got, I was actually expecting people to have like, killed each other, body parts flying all over the place, and one young, traumatized girl seen laughing manically in a puddle of blood, but all they did was topple over each other and roll on the floor.
I'm deeply disappointed, but I guess the red, white, and blue has given me a bit of bloodlust when I hear the word "disaster"