City inspectors have cracked down on elevator violations in the year after an ad executive was killed in a freak accident, The Post has learned.
Regulators have slapped property owners with nearly 50 percent more fines for the worst violations and have beefed up the number of inspectors on the payroll, sources said.
The move came after 41-year-old Suzanne Hart, an exec at Y&R, formerly Young & Rubicam, was killed on Dec. 14, 2011, when Elevator 9 at the firm’s 285 Madison Ave. building suddenly jolted upward as she was boarding.
Hart’s father, Alex, said he takes comfort in City Hall’s new-found aggressiveness in keeping elevators safe.
“I’m delighted to hear this,” Alex Hart told The Post. “I would hate to think that any other family would have to go through what we did.”
From January to October 2012, inspectors handed out 753 Environmental Control Board Class 1 fines — the most serious in the system, which begin at $1,500 — compared with 515 in the same time frame in 2011.
And eight new inspectors have been hired, bringing the total citywide force to 30.
At the time of Hart’s death, city elevator inspections had dropped 30 percent from 2010, when there were 725 Class 1 fines issued.
“We have intensified our focus on elevator safety,” said Buildings Department spokesman Tony Sclafani.
A half-hour before Hart stepped on the elevator, a repairman overrode the car’s safety system so work could be done, according to the results of a city probe.
Then, just two minutes before Hart tried to step into it, the mechanic and his co-workers stopped the job to take a break outside — without turning the safety system back on or warning people not to use the car.