On Saturday, thirty skiers were injured, four of them seriously, after their chairlifts violently fell on the slope of a Spanish ski resort near the French border, local authorities said.
This accident, which occurred in the morning in the Pyrenean resort of Astún in Aragon (north-east), caused a total of 30 victims, according to the latest report from the emergency services published in state of “30 to 35 injured”.
Miguel Ángel Clavero, director of Aragon’s emergency services, told public television that the accident was caused by “a problem with the pulley of one of the chairlifts.”
“This resulted in a loss of cable tension and some chairlifts falling while others remained suspended,” he added.
Ten victims had to be treated in hospitals, four of whom were in serious condition. The other twenty were treated by emergency services at the station itself.
Arriving on site, the president of the Aragon region where the Astún station is located, Jorge Azcón, indicated that the most serious victim, a woman, had to be transferred by helicopter to a hospital near the accident. .
All the skiers who were left hanging in their chairlift were rescued, he added.
-Five helicopters and around fifteen ambulances were mobilized while a field hospital was set up in the station.
“We were very scared”
A young witness to the incident told TVE that he saw a cable from the chairlift mechanism jump. “Suddenly the chairlifts started bouncing and people were flying,” he described.
“We suddenly heard a noise and fell to the ground in the chairlift. We bounced five times, up, down. [Certes]our backs hurt and we took blows, but there are people who fell from the chairlifts,” María Moreno, one of the victims, told public television.
“We were very scared,” she added, saying she saw people injured on the slope below after being “directly hit by the chairlifts” that had fallen.
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