Paris: Dozens of tourists, including at least one Briton and four children, spent the night trapped in cable cars at an altitude of more than 9,000ft in the French Alps before being rescued. Thirty-three holidaymakers — from France, the US, Germany, Italy and Korea — were stuck for 16 hours in freezing and windy conditions, some without coats, on what they thought would be a brief afternoon trip in a renowned beauty spot.
The lift company said “at least one Briton” was among those stranded overnight, along with two Korean children, a French child aged under 10 and an American child of 13. The “thin air shipwreck”, as the French media dubbed the drama, struck after the cables tangled at 11,800ft feet up, probably due to a violent gust of wind, prompting a major rescue operation.
Some 77 people were rescued on Thursday night in a spectacular operation requiring helicopters to perform delicate manoeuvres by hovering over the cable and then lowering rescuers on to an area “no larger than a table”.
Passengers were then strapped to their rescuers and airlifted to safety one by one. Col Frederic Labrune, commander of the provincial gendarmerie group of Haute-Savoie, described the feat as “air surgery”.
However, several cars could not be reached by rescuers, and had to be left hanging overnight after the operation was halted because of rough flight conditions.
Cyril Villard, 47, from Grenoble, said: “It had been a hot day and so we weren’t wearing too many layers. We had only intended on being up there for the day.
“We got no sleep at all. And we were hungry. We shared what food we had between us. I had a cereal bar, not much else because it was the end of the day. It was pitch black up there. But I had a head torch. Once night fell, it got bitterly cold. That was the worst thing. And at 3am it started swaying with the wind.
“We were not frightened because we had information. It was an experience.”
The spectacular three-mile cable car ride connects Aiguille du Midi peak on the French side of the mountain and the Helbronner summit on the Italian border.
The panoramic ride over glaciers usually takes 30 minutes to complete. The lift system broke down at 5.25pm. Engineers then struggled for hours to untangle three cables, slackening them in order to perform the tricky operation, but were unable to undo the third one. They finally succeeded shortly before 8am, when the last tourists were brought to safety. While some were shocked, only one, an elderly man, needed medical treatment for hyperthermia.
The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016
