Turkish cable car crash leaves 60 stranded midair overnight
ONE person was killed and 60 people were left hanging in the air overnight after a cable car collapsed in Turkey, the interior ministry said yesterday, prompting a massive rescue operation.
Ten helicopters and more than 607 rescue workers were involved in efforts to retrieve 174 people over the course of 23 hours.
On Friday afternoon a cabin at Antalya Cable Car, otherwise known as the Tunektepe Teleferik, collided with a broken pole outside the Turkish resort city of Antalya.
The cabin plunged into a rocky area down the mountainside as the pylon collapsed, Ali Yerlikaya, Turkey’s interior minister, said.
One person was killed, 10 people were left with injuries while 184 others were stuck in other cabins left hanging in the air.
Seven helicopters with night vision and more than 500 rescue workers including specialist mountaineers were called in to help the stranded passengers and brought 112 people down to safety. Yesterday morning more than 60 people were still stranded in the air.
They had all been rescued by the end of the day.
A video released by the interior ministry showed rescue personnel suspended by safety ropes climbing into cabins. A group of 10 opposition MPs were also at the scene to “investigate the accident in detail,” said Özgür Özel, chair of the opposition Republican People’s party.
Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation and ordered the detention of 13 people in relation to the incident, including officials from the private company running the cable car, justice minister Tunc Yilmaz told reporters after the rescue.
The Antalya Cable Car offers panoramas of Antalya and the Mediterranean Sea by taking passengers up over 1,500 metres to the top of Tunektepe. According to its website, the cable car has 36 cabins with a capacity of six people each.
The journey takes around nine minutes.