Following the incident, around 77 people were evacuated on Thursday itself, which included 48 who were airlifted with helicopters and 30 others were rescued through the cable cars, which were functioning near the stuck ones and were closest to the ground. The cars are at an altitude of almost 12,000 feet. The rescuers helped the passengers to climb down towards the ground.
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Italian officials involved in the rescue said around 70 of those trapped were rescued on Thursday night, either lifted by helicopter or belayed up to 300 feet to the ground.
Rescuers were dispatched to the high-altitude hanging cars late Thursday afternoon after employees of the cable auto company failed to untangle the lines.
“The last hour seemed very, very long. We called the operators who explained that three cables got snarled up and they had to be untangled but they didn’t manage to do it”, an unnamed man who was one of the first tourists to be rescued told French radio.
A major rescue effort was launched to retrieve the stranded passengers from the cable cars dangling 3,600 meters above the Mont Blanc massif in the Alps.
He said the helicopters rescued 65 people before the operation was suspended for the night because of rough flight conditions.
A tourist from Australia posted a picture on Instagram after riding the cable auto in Chamonix earlier.
Rescue operations are expected to resume Friday.
“We were in contact with them throughout the night, the people were cold” but there did not appear to be any health emergencies, the local police chief, Stephane Bozon, told AFP.
“The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable”, said Col. Frederic Labrunye, commander of the provincial gendarmerie group of Haute-Savoie.
During the night, a team of five rescuers, three French and two Italian police officers also attempted to reach the trapped tourists.
One of the officers managed to get into the auto where the 12-year-old boy was.
Cable cars that were stuck overnight thousands of metres up among the glaciers of Mont Blanc with some 33 tourists on board were restarted on Friday (Sept 9), the operators said.
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The cable vehicle, which offers spectacular up-close views of Western Europe’s tallest mountains and deep valleys below, connects the Aiguille de Midi peak in France, at 3,842 meters (12,605 feet), to Pointe Helbronner in Italy, at 3,462 meters (11,358 feet).
