Cable Breaks In Alps

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 13

Cable Breaks In Alps

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CHAMONIX (France), July 10. Three cable cars crowded with tourists were jolted off a guide cable yesterday and plunged more than 100 ft into the snowcovered floor of a two-mile-high valley in the shadow of Mount Blanc.

At least 74 persons—some of them children—were injured. Police said that 19 persons, including three children, were taken to hospital, and at least 60 others were treated for minor injuries or shock and released. Two of those in hospital are in a serious condition.

The badly injured were taken to hospitals in Chamonix, the resort town 9000 ft below the rugged 12,000fthigh “White Valley” where the accident occurred. All the tourists were believed to be either French or German.

The accident left another 80 tourists dangling in 40 other small cable cars in the shadow of Mount Blanc. The ears were slowly winched back to the terminal stations after swinging for hours as high as 500 ft above the valley floor.

The brightly-painted cable cars were near the end of the five-mile run linking France and Italy when the accident

occurred. The cable car ride is one of the highest in the world and offers a spectacular view of the French Alps. The injured, flown by helicopter to Chamonix, included a skier hit by falling debris as the three cars crashed.

It is believed that part of a support pylon failed and fell into the valley, dragging down with it the cars travelling between the pylon and the terminal station.

Five years ago, a French Air Force jet fighter on a training mission, clipped the cable in the valley, plunging three cars to the ground. Six persons were killed and many others were stranded in other cars.

Last Christmas, 17 skiers were hurled from a cable car in Central France when it made an emergency stop. Seven of them were killed and 10 others seriously injured.