Beaming faces early Saturday morning with the residents of the flat on Griegstraat in Tilburg. The elevator in the building, which broke down on Wednesday, is working again.
“Due to all the publicity, it was decided to go to work last night,” explains Henk Kleuver of the Owners’ Association on Saturday morning. “After a few hours of work, it worked. The elevator is working again!”
Towing to the apartment
In recent days, the residents of the complex – which partly consists of owner-occupied apartments and partly of rental housing from WonenBreburg – have not been able to use the elevator. This caused serious problems for several people. For example, Nanda, who lives on the fifth floor and is dependent on the elevator because of osteoarthritis, had to be hoisted ‘in a container’ to her apartment by the fire brigade.
Joke had been confined to her apartment on the sixth floor for the past few days because of the broken elevator. Like Nanda, she has osteoarthritis and also weak knee joints. Fortunately, her relatives came to bring groceries, but she was forced to make her daily walk with her walker in the flat. “If I don’t do it for a day, I immediately have more complaints because of the osteoarthritis.”
Great achievement
Henk speaks of a relief now that the elevator has been repaired. “Say yes! Last night I immediately sent out a message saying that our elevator maintenance company has done a great job and that we can use the elevator again since this morning. Actually, the maintenance company would only come this morning and thought need them all day long for this.”
Finally, the mechanics arrived at the apartment complex on Griegstraat around a quarter to twelve in the evening. According to him, the other residents did not notice much of the work. “It happened upstairs, on the roof and it was a bit of programming.”
‘More and more software was involved’
According to Henk, the problem was in the elevator’s software. “More and more software was falling over. The problematic part could not be ordered new, because it is no longer made. But they did everything they could and still found something, second-hand. This should help us out temporarily.”
The Owners’ Association immediately ordered an entirely new operating system for the lift, but there is a delivery time of six weeks. “So hopefully this part will last six weeks.”
‘The feeling that you are locked up’
Resident Joke is completely happy that she can now leave the door again. “Of course I’m going to use it right away! I’ll go downstairs and enjoy it very much”, she says. “Delicious!”
For the past few days she felt like she was locked up. “Of course I could walk on the gallery, but because of such a broken elevator you can’t do what you want to do if you have trouble walking. On the other hand: there are worse things. That your house is on fire or something. But fun is different.”
Note
Joke was told by some people ‘that something like this can happen to you if you live in an apartment’, that she could have taken this into account. “But I really didn’t expect a calamity like this when I bought this flat. Look, an elevator like this is broken for a few hours or a day … that can happen. But for days?”
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