Washington Monument Closed Until Mid-September

WASHINGTON, DC — The embattled Washington Monument — which has seen repeated breakdowns of its elevator in recent months, stranding tourists — will be closed until at least September and possibly longer, officials said.

The National Park Service said on its website Wednesday that "the Washington Monument will remain closed until at least Tuesday, Aug. 30, to allow for a thorough evaluation of the elevator in order to understand the reasons for the recent failures. We apologize for the inconvenience."

But federal staffers told Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton on Wednesday that the monument will be closed until at least mid-September, reports FOX DC.

Immediate elevator repairs will be made and inspections will be done through at least mid-September. After that, the park service will develop a plan for an overhaul of the dated and overused elevator that could take eight or nine months, the park service said at a Wednesday news conference, reports WTOP.

The monument was shut down Thursday after a cable caused the elevator to malfunction, trapping an employee and several visitors at the top. They were all forced to walk down 500 feet of stairs to leave the monument.

That incident came only a few days after a power outage caused the elevator to shut down. The National Park Service closed the monument to further investigate the cause of the malfunction. However, on Friday, Aug. 19, authorities said on Twitter that the monument would be closed for at least the next 10 days for "a thorough evaluation of the elevator to determine the cause of its recent failures."

“We are finding ourselves at the end of the life of this system. We know we have to modernize the system,” said Superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks Gay Vietzke.

The monument has a single elevator to take visitors to the top. Elevators in similar systems typically last no more than 25 years, Vietzke said. The Washington Monument’s elevator was last updated in the late 1990s, but the daily usage has accelerated its problems.

Five years ago, on Aug. 23, the entire D.C. region shook as an ultra-rare magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck central Virginia, sending Washington, D.C., workers streaming into the streets, and putting a huge crack in the top of the Washington Monument. Even today, the historic structure suffers from that event.

Ultimately, no one was injured in the earthquake, but it caused significant damage to the Washington Monument, resulting in millions of dollars in repairs and forcing the monument to be covered with scaffolding for many months. It didn't reopen until just two years ago.

While the stone and masonry repairs have been completed, the earthquake caused moisture to seep in through the cracks and may be partially to blame for the recent spate of elevator problems that has forced the monument to shut down several times, said National Park Service spokesperson Mike Litterst.

"We believe that the effects of the earthquake, including moisture seeping in through cracks, may have had a greater impact on the elevator system than originally believed and may be at least partially responsible for the earlier than anticipated replacement of the control system, currently underway," he said. "But we certainly can't say definitively that the earthquake is responsible," according to a WTOP report.

»Photo of Washington Monument courtesy of the National Park Service