ATLANTA — The two young boys who suffered escalator injuries at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport reently were wearing soft shoes connected to similar accidents at the airport and across the country, a Hartsfield spokesman said today.
A 7-year-old boy who was injured was wearing Crocs, the popular rubbery cloglike shoes, said airport spokesman Herschel Grangent. He suffered lacerations on a foot, Grangent said.
 BRANT SANDERLIN/Cox News Service This is the shoe that Andrew Meyer, 4, was wearing when his foot got caught in the escalator at Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. For a larger, high resolution image, click HERE |
And the 4-year-old who suffered injuries was wearing flip-flops, Grangent said, though a representative from the company that maintains the airport's escalators described them as sandals. Grangent did not know that boy's condition.
Both children were injured after their shoes got caught between the moving stairs and the sides, or skirts, of the escalators, Grangent said.
"The issue has been the footwear that people have been wearing," Grangent said. "I don't have any specific information, but we have seen some indications that it is happening all over the world in malls and other airports and other buildings."
A third boy, 7 years old, got his pair of Crocs caught in the escalator, but escaped unharmed, his mother said.
The state Labor Department, which is responsible for inspecting elevators, has documented four other similar incidents at the airport since April of last year, according to public records. Three involved children wearing Crocs. In the fourth, the child was wearing sandals.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning about such shoes in May. At the time, the commission said it had tracked 77 such "entrapment" incidents since January 2006, with about half resulting in injury.
The Colorado-based Crocs company released a statement July 22 announcing that in the coming year, the polyurethane shoes will be packaged and sold with educational hang tags reminding consumers "to use care when riding escalators and moving walkways."
Two weeks ago Andrew Meyer, one of the children recently reported by the Labor Department, suffered several broken toes when his Crocs were caught in a Hartsfield-Jackson escalator, said his mother, Belinda Skelton.
"Two-thirds of the way down, I heard, pop, pop, snap ... what I realized was Andrew's toes breaking," Skelton said. "We came within millimeters of losing [his] big toe."
Andrew, she said, is recovering after surgery and is on his second cast, unable to put any weight on his right foot. "You try keeping a 4-year-old from walking," said Skelton, who produces the Neal Boortz show on WSB radio, a station that is owned by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's parent company, Cox Enterprises Inc.
Asked for copies of accident reports concerning those escalators, Grangent referred the AJC to the company that manages them for the airport: Atlanta Airlines Terminal Corp. Kim Vagher, the corporation's executive director, referred the AJC to the state Department of Labor for copies of the reports.
Earl Everett, who is in charge of the Labor Department's elevator inspections, said his agency's reports on this week's accidents are not yet complete. But his inspectors have examined the escalators since the accidents and have determined they meet state code and are safe, Everett said.
"They are very safe for people to get on them. But if you are wearing Crocs, stand in the center of the stair," said Everett, who happened to be wearing a pair of camouflage-colored Crocs as he spoke to the AJC in his Atlanta office.
This week, Hartsfield posted signs and started airing public announcements throughout the airport warning people to be careful while wearing soft shoes on the escalators, Grangent said.
"Kids do like to play on escalators. It's just something fascinating for them," Grangent said.
"You just have to watch them and hold their hand when you are on those escalators or otherwise anything could happen."
This story was published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Staff writer John Perry contributed to this article.
