When we heard, Andrew and I rushed over and joined the throng of onlookers. I took some pictures, but wasn't able to get close enough to get a quality shot of the broken tower.
You'll be able to see that the third tower sheared right in half.
This caused the cable to drop, and an eyewitness said that she saw one of the gondolas hit the ground before it bounced back up.
The gondola in question is the Excalibur Gondola, which connects the Whistler base to Blackcomb mountain. The Excalibur is also used by mountain employees who live in Staff Housing on what's called Base Two on Blackcomb.
You'll see one of the gondola cabins resting on top of the bus shelter. There is a crane supporting the cable as well, keeping things together.
Many people were quickly reminded of Whistler's 1995 Quicksilver Express disaster, when a chair dislodged and slid backwards on the cable, taking out four chairs and sending them crashing to the ground. Two people were killed, and nine were injured. That whole chair was ripped out, and the Creekside Gondola was installed.
Happily, this accident was not so severe. People were stuck in the cabins for quite some time though. It's -20ish right now, so that would have been a cold few hours. Apparently everyone was rescued (about fifty skiers and riders I believe) about an hour ago, three hours or so after the accident occurred.
Apparently Doppelmayr's (the company the manufactured the lift) CEO is still in town, as he was here for the grand opening of the new Peak to Peak Gondola a few days ago. He'll be earning his paycheque today I imagine.
It'll be interesting to see how the Whistler Blackcomb PR department handles this, and what this means to this winter's tourist numbers and the mountain's reputation before the upcoming Olympics.
Here are the pictures.
1 comment:
Oh my goodness!!!
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