Tourists, trapped in Mont Blanc cable car overnight, rescued

More than 100 tourists were trapped in the Mont Blanc region of France on Thursday evening when the cable vehicle service they were using developed a snag, reported AFP.

FORTY-five people are stuck in cable cars high above the glaciers of Mont Blanc in the French Alps after a helicopter rescue operation was suspended as night fell on Thursday, officials said.

More than 110 people were initially trapped on the five kilometre ride between two mountain peaks at an altitude of over 3000 metres when three cables snared.

Helicopters rescued 65 of them, but 45 had to be left there overnight after operations were halted because of rough flight conditions.

The remaining 33 people were in cable cars too high off the ground, so they stayed overnight.

“We had just started from flagship station Helbronner on the Italian side, when everything froze”.

Dozens of people were therefore forced to spend the night at an altitude of about 12,468ft in sub-zero temperatures.

Teams yesterday had been able to rescue 77 passengers, a lot of them by helicopters and others who were able to climb down with help.

The cable vehicle restarted Friday morning, and the remaining tourists were rescued without the use of helicopters.

French and Italian helicopters flew in rescuers who dropped down on cables onto the tops of the cars, and lifted out passengers one by one.

The cable cars offer panoramic views of Mont Blanc, which straddles the French-Italian border.

Mathieu Dechavanne, the head of the cable vehicle company, said it appeared that cables had crossed over “for unexplained reasons” but probably due to strong gusts of wind.

A tourist who was trapped overnight smiles as he walks at the foot of the cable vehicle service after his rescue.

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.

“We succeeded in evacuating, in very hard conditions, 60 people in an hour and a half”, the prefect of the Haute-Savoie region, Georges-Francois Leclerc told AFP.