Fans don’t care about their thermostat, but they should be aware of the risks.
A recent incident in which an elderly woman in her 80s was allegedly misting a kitchen fan at a restaurant in Australia left her with a heart attack and a broken neck.
The victim, a grandmother, was taken to hospital in an intensive care unit, but the cause of her death has not been determined.
The incident occurred when the woman allegedly misted a fan at an open bar and was then asked by the restaurant’s manager to close it off.
According to the Melbourne Herald Sun, the woman asked for her ventilator to be turned off and was later seen to walk away from the restaurant and leave the restaurant with the fan.
The fan’s operator, James Sorensen, said he was shocked when he discovered the woman was misting the fan in a restaurant, and that he had been working in the restaurant since the start of the week and could not recall the incident.
“It’s one of those things where you just go, ‘Wow, that’s not fair’,” Sorenesen told the Herald Sun.
“I’d like to apologise to her for that and she’ll never come back here again.”
Sorensensen told ABC News the woman misted the fan at the bar, but was not aware of it until she returned to the restaurant.
He said he asked the woman to put the fan back on and told her she was not allowed to do that.
“She said ‘Oh, I’m sorry.
I’ve just done it again’,” Sorenson told ABC.”
But I told her I was going to put it back on, and I said, ‘That’s not my fault.
I was just doing it for the sake of the environment’.”
The Herald Sun said the woman also asked to change her venti hose, which was then found to be leaking.
“This woman is a very, very elderly person and is very,very frail,” Sorensen told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“So when she was told she could not do that, she was very upset, and she had a heart condition.”
A spokesperson for Victoria’s Health Department told the ABC the incident was not the first time a fan had been misted at a bar.
“A customer who misted an air conditioner fan at The Diner in Brisbane last week was told to close the ventilators off,” the spokesperson said.
“In the meantime, the customer had the air conditioners turned off as part of the cleaning process.”
The spokesperson said staff would be “conducting a full investigation” to see if any rules were broken.
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