A fireman works at the rescue work. Bombero’s Quito
The Quito Cable Car climbs 3,947 meters above the Rucu Pichincha volcano, one of the highest funiculars in South America and a popular tourist attraction in the Ecuadorian capital. This Thursday, 74 people were trapped in the upper part, 27 of them were locked in the hanging cabins for ten hours, in the middle of the road when they returned to the exit station. The other 46 tourists were stranded at the top of the mountain while waiting for one of the gondolas and had to walk for more than six hours in severe cold and fog, following the leaders of the Quito Fire Department, which activated light reflectors to facilitate the descent.
The rescue operation for those floating in the cabins lasted about ten hours. The firefighters of Quito and the police had to intervene to carry out a vertical rescue using ropes and allow the 27 people distributed in 16 cabins to descend. “We did drone mapping to find out where all the people were,” the Quito Fire Department explained before climbing the towers to reach each gondola, which opened doors manually and secured each person to go ashore.
The city’s mayor, Pabel Muñoz, arrived on the night after some of those trapped posted videos on social media saying they had spent several hours without any further information from the cable car administration. “I am absolutely outraged by the company’s lack of a clear, efficient and secure protocol to save the people who we later had to intervene,” Muñoz said.
According to the agency, cable car operations were suspended at 4:30 p.m., but it was not until 6:03 p.m. that the 911 emergency call was notified and the fire department and police were activated, who began the rescue operation on the mountain northwest of Quito. at 8 p.m. and lasted until 3 a.m. due to the difficult climatic and mountainous conditions in the area. “If this event had happened during the day, the rescue conditions would have been different, simpler and with different tools that cannot be used at night,” the firefighters said. Almost at dawn, the 74 people were rescued and treated by the health service. The municipality of Quito has closed the cable car as a preventive measure and will check that permits are up to date and that maintenance work has been carried out.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
subscribe to