Library West's escalators came to a halt Friday morning when a technician broke the inside glass panel of the up escalator during a routine maintenance check.
The escalator was shut down, forcing students to access the floor above via the library's single, ground-floor elevator for most of Friday afternoon. Some students, unwilling to wait, ran up the down escalator against the regular flow of traffic.
Workers constructed a temporary wooden barrier over the weekend so the escalator could stay in service.
The company responsible for the maintenance and the break, ThyssenKrupp, is looking for a local replacement, since the escalator's original panel was manufactured in Germany.
Jim McCauley, service foreman for the company, said an employee was cleaning dirt out of a crevice in the escalator's exit ramp when he hit the glass panel with his cleaning tool. McCauley said new glass would not be purchased for at least a week. There will be no additional repair costs for UF, he said, as the scheduled maintenance was already covered under contract.
