Nine die in Austrian cable car plunge

By Alexandra Zawadi

VIENNA (Reuters) – Nine people were killed when a
helicopter dropped a concrete block on a ski-lift, plunging a
cable car filled with tourists down a mountain side in the
western Austrian state of Tyrol, police said on Monday.

Austrian radio reported that the victims were mainly young
ski tourists traveling to the glacier ski area above the
popular Alpine resort of Soelden.

A helicopter carrying material to a mountain-top
construction site shed its load over the ski-lift, knocking one
car off its wires and causing others to swing violently and
throw out their passengers, police said.

A spokeswoman for the Austrian Red Cross said up to 10 more
people had been seriously injured in the incident.

Soelden, close to the city of Innsbruck, is a popular ski
resort both in winter and in summer, when hikers, skiers and
snowboarders take cable cars up to glaciers on the peaks above
the village.

The lift carried passengers between Rettenbach and
Tiefenbachferner, two stations in the sprawling ski area.

Austrian press agency APA reported that the helicopter was
flying the piece of concrete, weighing around 750 kilograms
(1,650 pounds), around 300 meters (yards) above the ski-lift
cables when the block fell.

Mountainous Austria has around 3,000 cable cars and ski
lifts, transporting around 500 million people a year and
creating an important stream of revenue for villages and ski
resorts nestled high in the Alps.

Almost five years ago, 155 people were killed when a
funicular ski train caught fire in a tunnel near Kaprun, 60
miles south of Salzburg in Austria’s worst peacetime disaster.