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Gondola crash: One dead in Switzerland accident; chilling visuals emerge as witness shares possible reason
A ski gondola crashed down a mountain in Engelberg, Switzerland, killing a 61-year-old woman and chilling visuals from the accident have surfaced online.
A ski gondola crashed down a mountain in Engelberg, Switzerland, killing a 61-year-old woman on Wednesday. Chilling visuals of the accident surfaced online.
The incident took place at the Engelberg-Titlis ski resort, high up in the Alps in central Switzerland. Videos showed a small cabin had detached and toppled down a snowy slope.
“At the time of the accident one person was alone in the gondola. This person sustained fatal injuries,” authorities said, as per Agence France-Presse. While cops said the person sustained fatal injuries, an official cause of death was not given. The person's age and nationality were not revealed either.
The gondola belonged to local lift company BET, as per Reuters.
Switzerland gondola accident videos
A video showed the gondola fall down a slope.
Another photo showed the wrecked condition of the gondola and parts of videos also captured the first responders' trying to access the scene.
The gondola had just left Trübsee station and was climbing the middle section of the mountain when the accident took place as per reports. The woman who was killed was from the region.
An official cause for the accident is being investigated. However, a skier shared that there were ‘extremely strong winds’ at the time which had left the gondolas swaying, BBC reported. Cops said wind speeds reached over 50mph or 80 kmph and the gondola service is usually suspended when wind speeds climb over 60 kmph or 37 mph.
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“At 40 kilometres per hour, a wind alarm goes off for this sort of cable car. At that speed, the personnel are on high alert. And at 60 kilometers per hour, another wind alarm goes off requiring the system come to a stop,” AFP also reported head of the resort's ski lifts, Norbert Pratt say. However, he did not know if high winds had caused the accident.
Meanwhile, a video on X showed exactly how hard the wind was blowing when the accident occurred.
Several witnesses recounted the moment of the accident. “My mother looked at me and said suddenly - look, a gondola is falling. She pretty much heard the impact of the gondola and saw how it fell,” one said.
Another added “I was really shocked. We were then afraid to go back down in the gondola.”
The Rega rescue service had sent a helicopter to the area, it confirmed to AFP.
