E-Paper
11 tourists stuck in Himachal cable car rescued in 6-hour ops; probe ordered
Timber Heights resort cable car: This is the second incident involving cable cars in the country in the last three months. Three persons died in the Jharkhand accident in April this year
Eleven tourists were stranded for hours in a cable car stuck mid-air due to a glitch at Parwanoo’s Timber Trail resort in Himachal Pradesh’s Solan district before they were rescued in a six-hour-long operation, police said.
Chief minister Jairam Thakur who oversaw the rescue operations later ordered a probe into the incident.
Police said the 11 tourists including four females, were stranded at about 10.30am when the ropeway suddenly stopped, reportedly due to a technical snag in the trolley’s shaft.
The tourists, said to be from Delhi, were on their way from the Timber Trail resort at a height of 2,000 feet above sea level to the Timber Train Heights and Terrace Resort at 5,000-feet height. Ordinarily, the 2.8km ride over the Kaushalya river, flowing in a deep gorge of the Shivalik range, takes a little over 10 minutes.
It took the authorities and the cable car operator about six hours to complete the rescue operation, superintendent of police Solan Virender Sharma said after the operation was concluded at 5.30pm.
Himachal chief minister Jairam Thakur, who was on his way back to Shimla from Hamirpur in a chopper, conducted an aerial survey of the rescue operation and later met the rescued tourists.
The Solan district initially indicated that they might require assistance from the military to rescue the tourists but later, superintendent of police Virendra Sharma said they were able to manage
Sharma said rescue workers deployed a second cable car trolley to rescue the occupants.
Thakur
One of the rescued persons told the media that all 11 tourists were from Delhi.
According to Solan Superintendent of Police Virendra Sharma, another cable car trolley was deployed to rescue the people.
In a tweet earlier, Thakur said a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was also at the spot.
This is the second incident involving cable cars in the country in less than three months.
Three people died after two cable cars connecting the Trikut Hills in Jharkhand’s Deoghar collided in April due to a technical glitch. Of the three dead, two fell to their death during a botched helicopter rescue attempt.
The last major incident at the Timber Trail resort ropeway took place on October 13, 1992 when the haulage of the cable broke near the docking station and the cable car with 11 passengers slid backwards. The operator jumped off the car and died after hitting a rock.
The tourists were rescued by the Indian Air Force in a joint operation carried out by the 152-helicopter unit based at Sarsawa in Uttar Pradesh, 1 Para Commando unit at Nahan, Himachal Pradesh, and an engineers’ unit at Chandimandir.
The operation was helmed by then Group Capt Fali H Major, who later rose to become the IAF chief later in his career.
A para commando used a helicopter winch to land on top of the car. He opened the escape hatch on top of the car and lifted up the passengers, one at a time. Due to the failing light, only four passengers could be rescued on October 14, and the commando, Major Ivan Joseph Crasto, stayed the night in the car. The rest of the passengers were rescued the next day.
