Governor: About 170 people dead in Austrian cable car fire

Melissa Eddy

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2000 | 10:54 a.m.

KAPRUN, Austria - A cable car crammed to capacity with skiers and snowboarders caught fire Saturday while being pulled through an Alpine tunnel, trapping the passengers deep inside a mountain and killing about 170 people - many of them children and teen-agers.

Rescuers were unable to reach the car as the fire raged for hours, sending smoke spewing from the mouth of the tunnel below. The fire burned the car down to the chassis, firefighters said, and few survived.

Of about 180 people on board, only eight managed to escape, Salzburg Gov. Franz Schausberger said. Later, an area hospital said 18 people were brought in by ambulance, most of them German and the rest Austrian. All suffered cuts, bruises and the effects of smoke inhalation.

Among those not located hours after the fire were 23 Americans. Their fate was not immediately clear.

As night fell, relatives and friends of unaccounted-for skiers gathered in the nearby Alpine village of Kaprun, waiting and hoping that their loved ones were not among those who burned to death in the smoky tunnel. One man from the neighboring town of Mittersill was waiting, hoping that his son Marcus, 16, would be among the survivors.

"My son went up there with one of his friends," said the man, who asked not to be identified. "A friend works at the cable car. He gave him two free passes."

Nearby, a woman and her daughter clasped each other, crying wordlessly. At one end of the hall, volunteers entered name after name into computers, recording people who were still alive and had been tracked down in nearby hotels.

The tragedy appeared to be the most serious ever involving cable-driven ski transportation. In 1976, 42 people died after a cable snapped at the Italian ski resort of Cavalese.

"Most of them were youths," Schausberger said of Saturday's victims in an interview with state television. "Today is a day of mourning."

The passengers were riding the cable car up Kitzsteinhorn mountain to enjoy late fall sunshine and balmy weather at the popular glacial peak and ski resort. But as the car was pulled more than 3,200 yards through the long tunnel that burrows into the mountain, fire broke out, leaving it trapped.

Reporters near the scene were told that fresh air sucked into the tunnel fed the flames, which apparently broke out in the front compartment occupied by a cable car attendant. The blaze "spread at a raging speed - like a fireplace," Schausberger said.

The car was reportedly stopped about 600 yards inside the tunnel, and rescuers were unable to reach the compartment. Norbert Karlsboeck, the mayor of Kaprun, the town near the accident, said the fire continued burning more than three hours after it broke out. It was extinguished by early afternoon.

The few survivors apparently escaped after a man smashed a rear window of the car with a ski pole, the Austria Press Agency quoted an unidentified hospital official as saying.

Among the dead were three people waiting in a passenger area outside the tunnel but connected to it, Schausberger said. They died of smoke inhalation. Also killed was the cable car attendant in an otherwise empty car that was going toward the valley as the one carrying the other victims was going up.

The cable car enters the mountainside after being hoisted up a steep ramp supported by metal struts. State television said the massive steel cable pulling the cars up the slope apparently snapped before the fire broke out.

Manfred Mueller, the head of technical operations for the underground cable car system, said an alarm sounded and the cable car attendant was told to open the doors. Minutes later, officials lost radio contact with the attendant. It was unclear whether the doors ever opened.

Schausberger said he was at a loss to explain what happened.

"Everything was fine" when inspectors from the transport ministry checked the cable car system in September, he told reporters. He warned of further potential danger, saying the remnants of the car could slide back down and crash into the valley station where the passengers boarded.

A massive rescue operation was mounted with some 13 helicopters, teams of police, doctors and Red Cross workers all at the site, Karlsboeck said. Helicopters also made their way from neighboring Bavaria, in southern Germany, carrying firefighters with special equipment. The Red Cross assembled a team of 40 psychologists to help relatives cope with their grief.

The Kitzsteinhorn resort, located about 60 miles south of Salzburg in the heart of the Austrian Alps, is a popular summer and early winter skiing area with Europeans and vacationing Americans alike.

Among those not yet located hours after the fire broke out were 23 Americans, including two children, from a ski club at the U.S. military's Leighton Barracks in Wuerzburg, Germany, said trip leader Debbie Bruce-Duncan. She said she and several others from the group had not gone up the mountain because they decided to shop Saturday instead of skiing.

The cable car system, built in 1974, was modernized six years ago to include two state-of-the-art cars and technology. It can transport some 1,500 people from the valley station to the summit each hour. The system has never before recorded an accident, said Hans Wallner, the director of the tourist region of Kaprun.

Experts interviewed on television said the cable car system was supposed to be fireproof.

Austria's president, Thomas Klestil, expressed condolences to relatives, and the government declared Saturday and Sunday national days of mourning. Schausberger also declared Saturday a day of mourning in Salzburg province.