Fifteen tourists were rescued after their cable cars were stranded mid-air due to a technical glitch in Himachal Pradesh’s Solan district on Monday, ANI reported. The rescue operation took over three hours.
Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said that the rescue teams had to face difficulties due to bad weather conditions.
“I want to thank Home Minister Amit Shah for moving NDRF [National Disaster Response Force] team to the spot at the earliest and keeping the Air Force on alert for the rescue of stranded people,” Thakur said, according to ANI.
Disaster Management Principal Secretary Onkar Chand Sharma said that 11 tourists were stranded in an uphill trolly, while four of them were in a downhill trolly.
Solan Superintendent of Police Virendra Sharma said that another cable car trolley was deployed to rescue the people, according to PTI.
In a similar incident in 1992, the cable of the rope car had broken near the docking station, pulling the car back. Eleven passengers were in the cable car. The operator had jumped off the car as it began to slide back and died as his head hit a rock. All the passengers were rescued in three days.
In April, 43 persons were trapped in three cable cars in Trikut Hills in Jharkhand’s Deoghar district. They were rescued after 40 hours. The accident took place after a pulley of one of the trolleys got stuck midway.
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