MADRID: A chairlift collapsed at a resort in the Spanish region of Aragon on Saturday, injuring dozens of people, nine of them very seriously and eight seriously, the regional government said.
Around 80 people remain trapped, hanging in the chairlift at the ski resort of Astun, in the province of Huesca, according to state TV channel TVE.
“It’s like a cable has come off, the chairs have bounced and people have been thrown off,” a witness told TVE.
The cause of the cable failure remains unknown.
The ski resort’s management declined to comment and was not immediately able to say if foreigners were among the injured.
Several helicopters were working in the area to rescue the skiers who were still trapped on the chairlift and transfer the injured to nearby hospitals.
The Astun ski resort, mainly popular among Spanish skiers, is located close to the Spanish border with France, in the Pyrenees mountain range.
Chairlifts are widely used in the northern mountainous regions of Pakistan to transport from one mountain to another.
In August 2023, a chairlift transporting schoolchildren became immobilized midair due to a rope malfunction in Battagram area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Eight schoolchildren, accompanied by their teacher, found themselves marooned in a cable car within Battagram’s Allai tehsil.
Authorities reported that the incident transpired at 8:00am as the students were en route to school. This unfortunate event left them suspended at an elevation of 1,500 feet.
According to Allai tehsil Chairman Mufti Gulamullah, the incident occurred at 8am when the children were on the way to school.
But mid-air, two wires of the cable car snapped leaving them stuck at a height of approximately 3,000 feet, he said, adding that the cable was privately run by locals for transportation across the river as there were no roads or bridges in the area.
Zafar Iqbal, a school teacher, said that the students were coming to the school by the chairlift.
“The chairlift is used to go from one place to another. In this area, 150 children come to school by chairlift,” he said, confirming that two wires of the cable car broke down mid-air.
The trapped individuals were rescued after the passage of more than 12 hours, speaking volumes of the substandard rescue system in the country.