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11 stuck mid-air in cable car, rescued after 6-hour operation
According to police officers privy to developments, the cable car was on the way to the Timber Train Heights and Terrace Resort in Parwanoo when it broke down around 10:30 am
Shimla/ Parwanoo: Eleven tourists who were stranded mid-air after their cable car broke down were rescued after a six-hour long operation on Monday in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh on Monday, police said.
According to police officers privy to developments, the cable car was on the way to the Timber Train Heights and Terrace Resort in Parwanoo when it broke down around 10:30 am. A total of 11 tourists, including four women, were left stranded, said Solan superintendent of police Virender Sharma.
The tourists, all of whom reportedly hail 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.
Chief minister Jairam Thakur, who oversaw the rescue operation, later ordered a probe into the incident.
It took the authorities and the cable car operator about six hours to complete the rescue operation, SP Sharma said after the operation was concluded at 5.30pm.
Chief minister 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.
Sharma said rescue workers deployed a second cable car trolley to rescue the occupants.
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 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. All 11 tourists had been 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.
