Several tourists, including a 10-year-old child, spent the night stuck in cable cars thousands of metres up among the glaciers of Mont Blanc, officials said.
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The tourists were suspended above the glaciers of Mont Blanc at an altitude of about 3,800m (12,468ft) after wires carrying the cars became tangled, reported the BBC.
Most people were evacuated from the cars via helicopter and by a rescue team yesterday, but 33 people were left overnight because the chopper couldn’t operate in the dark.
One of the last families to be evacuated from the dangling cable cars on Friday morning told Reuters TV how worsening weather on Thursday evening meant they had to spend the night in the freezing cabin.
Earlier in the day, helicopters rescued 65 of the 110 riders trapped in the Chamonix region near Mont Blanc earlier Thursday, a local government official with knowledge of the operation told CNN.
The incident was caused by cables that got crossed for “unknown reasons”, but a gust of wind is thought to have played a part, Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the Mont-Blanc Company that manages the cable cars, told AFP. The crews then had to strap themselves to passengers and rescue them one by one – something Labrunye described as “air surgery”.
From there, rescuers brought the passengers by foot to the nearest mountain station. The cable vehicle restarted Friday morning, and the remaining tourists were rescued without the use of helicopters.
One of the officers managed to get into the auto where the 12-year-old boy was.
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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). All the tourists are now safe, The Associated Press reports. For the protection of AP and its licensors, content may not be copied, altered or redistributed in any form. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
