On Friday morning, 33 people were rescued after being trapped overnight in cable cars 3,800 meters above the Mont Blanc glaciers in the French Alps.
Advertisement
The cable cars usually take 30-35 minutes to connect the famed Aiguille du Midi peak to the Pointe Helbronner. The rescuers helped the passengers to climb down towards the ground.
Sixty tourists are stuck on cable cars over Mont Blanc and will not be rescued until morning because of darkness and poor weather. “I was also surprised that the attendants opened the door to the cable vehicle when the cable auto was still swinging to and fro when it came into the landing bay”.
“In the last few days and hours, a terrorist cell was dismantled, composed of young women totally receptive to the deadly Daesh ideology”, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, using an Arabic acronym for the extremist group.
An elderly man was treated for hypothermia, but all the passengers trapped overnight in the small, four-person pods were in good condition despite their ordeal, police said.
“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 tourists rescued so far are understood to be French, Italian and American. Children aged seven and nine from South Korea and a 10-year-old from Italy were among those stranded. Emergency workers spent the night with the stranded stranded tourists, giving them blankets, warm clothing and food.
A spokesperson for the company added via a statement that the cable cars remained “closed to the public for technical analysis”, in conjunction with authorities. French and Italian helicopters were called in, and rescue teams managed to get 65 of them to safety.
The employees of the company were not able to fix the cars, forcing an evacuation operation to begin around 5:00 pm.
Advertisement
(AP Photo/Luca Bruno). Aerial view, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, of three cars of the Panoramic Mont Blanc cable auto where tourists were trapped after it stalled around 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Thursday, when its cables reportedly tangled.
