Tourists trapped overnight in cable cars high above the glaciers of Mont Blanc were brought to safety Friday morning after technicians repaired tangled cables, the operator said.
Emergency workers had scrambled at first light to rescue the 33 stranded people, including a child, after the ride jammed at 5.30pm on Thursday.
More than 110 people were initially trapped on the 5km ride between two mountain peaks at an altitude of over 3,000m when three cables snared.
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Four helicopters rescued 65 from the four-person cable cars before night fell over Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps.
Emergency blankets and bottles of water were dropped for those left stuck. Another dozen people were evacuated during the night by rescuers using ropes.
One of the last families to be evacuated from the dangling cable cars on Friday morning told how worsening weather on Thursday meant they had to spend the night in the freezing cabin.
“We just needed five more minutes to be evacuated, but it was too cloudy, they couldn’t do it,” Valery Delisle, who came with his sons from Aix-en-Provence, said outside a cafe at the base of the ride in the French town of Chamonix.
– (Reuters)
