The cables were uncrossed, the cable cars have been restarted at Mont Blanc …
They spent all night hanging in the air. The 33 people blocked since Thursday afternoon in a gondola cable car of Mont Blanc, were finally able to reach the ground on Friday morning. The cable car has been unlocked. “It is left there five minutes, the last cable (blocking machine) could be uncrossed,” said Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the company Mont Blanc , just before 8am. So the last passengers were rescued without being airlifted.
#Chamonix #MontBlanc #PGHM #Héliporté https://t.co/R4HhM7Ew2z pic.twitter.com/a0au9IUue3
— * Olivier * (@NorSecure) 9 September 2016
Around 6:45 am, personnel and material relief were routed in a first bucket of the Skyway cable car Monte Bianco, Italian side for mounting on the Helbronner peak (3,462 meters). Then a first helicopter of high mountain gendarme platoon (PGHM) Chamonix (Haute-Savoie) took off around 7 am.
“People have been cold but we have none in vital distress”
“We were in touch with them all night, people were cold but we have no vital distress,” said the commander of the PGHM, Stéphane Bozon.
Premiers retours de clients du téléphérique à #Chamonix après leur nuit à 3800m au début du glacier du #Montblanc pic.twitter.com/aeSak7zqmq
— Gwenaël Windrestin (@Gwen_WB) 9 September 2016
Seventy-seven others, who were also trapped, had been evacuated Thursday evening and in the night: 48 winched by helicopter and thirty, located in closest cabins ground, lowered in recall by French and Italian rescue teams.
It is a crossover cable that intervened “for reasons unexplained”, but probably due to a gust of wind, which blocked the cable car built in the 1950s, according Dechavanne Mathieu, CEO of the company Mont Blanc (lifts mechanical).
