Fifty-three stranded skiers and snowboarders at Whistler Blackcomb were rescued from gondola cars Tuesday after a tower supporting the lift collapsed at the popular ski resort. Twelve people were injured in the accident, said Ryan Proctor with Whistler Blackcomb public relations, but all had been released from the local clinic by Tuesday evening.
The accident occurred at 2:30 p.m. on the Excalibur Gondola, which carries skiers to the top of Blackcomb Mountain from Whistler Village. Some skiers and boarders were trapped for hours until the evacuation was complete just before 6 p.m.
In an interview shortly after being rescued, snowboarder Logan Swayze said he entered a gondola car at 2:15 p.m. A short time later, it stopped abruptly. “We didn’t think anything of it at first. [The lifts] stop all the time,” he said. “But the time drew on.” Only after he made a phone call to a friend did he learn that a tower had collapsed. After an hour’s wait, Swayze’s car was moved slowly to the base, where he saw fire and ambulance crews stretching ladders to the cars to bring skiers to the ground. “We saw a lift tower had broken in half and the gondola was hanging. There were still people in the bottom half” of the gondola, he said.
There was a delay before anyone could be taken off as rescue workers had to secure the fallen tower, said Whistler Blackcomb spokesman Doug Forseth. The accident happened when the top half of tower No. 4 separated from its base near Fitzsimmons Creek, between Whistler Village and Base Two on Blackcomb Mountain. Forseth said no one yet knows why the connection came loose. An investigation is under way by Whistler Blackcomb and the BC Safety Authority.
None of the gondola cars came off the cable. One hit a house and another came to rest on a bus shelter, Whistler RCMP Sgt. Steve Wright said.
In all, 15 to 20 cars on the lower base of the gondola were stranded. The cars hold a maximum of eight passengers each, but were not full, officials said.
The upper loop of the gondola — running from Base Two to further up Blackcomb — operates separately and passengers on that loop were able to unload as usual.
Michelle Leroux, spokeswoman for the Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, the company that built the Excalibur Gondola, said she was not aware of any accidents on the Excalibur since its installation in 1994. The Excalibur is tested by the B.C. Safety Authority every year and passed its most recent test this fall, she said.
Eighty per cent of the high speed chairs and gondolas on Whistler and Blackcomb have been designed and built by Doppelmayr, including the new Peak 2 Peak gondola between Whistler and Blackcomb.
Lara Christensen, one of five people suspended in a car during the incident, said that when the tower collapsed, “all of a sudden there was a really big jolt.” She said the car was moving a lot and the cables bouncing “like crazy.”
Whistler resident Corey Gagnon said just minutes after getting off the Excalibur Gondola, he saw one of the cars “swinging violently” on the cable.
David Komadowski said he was walking through the village when he heard “a big thud,” similar to the sound of a car crash. He turned and saw the collapsed tower.
In 2002, a five-year-old girl fell about 11 metres (35 feet) from the Creekside Gondola at Whistler when a latch malfunctioned and the car door opened. Soft snow cushioned her fall and she survived.
The gondola was installed in 1996 to replace the Quicksilver Express, after an accident in December 1995 in which two people died and eight were injured when four chairs fell four storeys to the ground.
A damning report by the B.C. coroner’s service said the Quicksilver accident could have been prevented, detailing a litany of failures by the manufacturer, the ski resort and government regulators to correct flaws in the lift.
Special to The Sun
