The Associated Press reports the tourists left dangling above Mount Blanc were rescued Friday, Sept. 9, after untangling the cables the jammed and stopped the cars where they were.
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Their return to land ended an extraordinarily complex and vertiginous rescue effort over two days amid the spectacular but risky landscape of Western Europe’s tallest mountains.
Another 14 were rescued when the weather conditions improved Friday morning before the problem with the cable cars was fixed and the cars rolled back down the mountain according to Walter Milan, a spokesperson for Italy’s mountain rescue service. The passengers were then flown by helicopter to Chamonix and the Italian town of Courmayeur.
Almost 110 people were initially stranded in the cable cars near the Chamonix ski resort after the cars stalled due to tangled cables.
Louis Delisle, a 23-year-old who was on the cable vehicle with his father, Valery Delisle, told Reuters his health struggled while waiting overnight to be rescued.
“The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable”, Col. Frederic Labrunye, commander of the local gendarmerie, told the AP.
Around 30 people spent a cold night above the highest point in the Alps waiting for rescue until morning. Crews had to remove people from the cars one at a time by strapping them to individual rescuers.
“We were old enough, we had experience in mountain conditions but for them it was a little bit more complicated with their children, seven and nine years old, that anxious us”, he said.
From there, rescuers brought the passengers by foot to the nearest mountain station.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said four helicopters were deployed and they rescued 65 people before efforts were suspended for the night. “It was a odd experience, but they were warm under blankets and with their families”.
The trapped passengers had access to emergency blankets, energy bars and bottles of water, which are stocked aboard the cars.
Kathy Cook, a tourist from MI who was carried down to the ground by a rescuer after nearly 10 hours aloft, called it “really quite an experience”.
“The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in”, she told A.P., “so we had to just wait and then they decided they could belay us safely to the ground, and we walked up the glacier to the hut”.
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La Compagnie du Mont Blanc, which runs the cable vehicle, said in a statement that, while the cables can become tangled after an abrupt halt to the system or in strong winds, it was not clear what caused the issue on Thursday.
