More than thirty people were injured, several seriously, in a chairlift accident on Saturday at a ski resort in the Pyrenees in northeastern Spain, near the French border, local authorities said.
“We are talking about 30 to 35 injured, serious, very serious or less serious,” Miguel Ángel Clavero, director of emergency services in the Aragon region, where Astún station.
Heavy falls to the ground and people stuck in the air
“Obviously, there was a problem with the pulley of one of the chairlifts, which led to a loss of tension in the cable and the fall of some chairlifts,” he explained.
Regional President Jorge Azcón said for his part that the three most seriously injured people had been transferred to hospital, one of them, a woman, by helicopter. Local media reported a total of nine very seriously injured people, which Jorge Azcón did not confirm.
All the skiers who remained suspended in their chairlift were able to be rescued, he added. “We suddenly heard a noise and fell to the ground in the chairlift. We bounced five times, up, down and our backs hurt and we took hits but there were people who fell from the chairlifts,” María Moreno, one of the victims, told public television. “We were very scared,” she added.
-A cable that jumps
A young person who witnessed the incident, also on TVE, said he saw a cable from the chairlift mechanism jump. “Suddenly the chairlifts started bouncing and people were flying,” he described.
Five helicopters and around fifteen ambulances were mobilized to evacuate the injured to hospitals near the station, where a field hospital was set up, according to the emergency services.
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