Helicopter knocks out cable car, killing nine.

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source: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=3D1894812005

Nine dead as concrete falls on cable car

GEORGE JAHN IN VIENNA AND ALLAN HALL IN BERLIN

Key points
=B7 Tragedy strikes in Austrian Alps
=B7 Nine killed in cable car disaster
=B7 Cause was falling lump of concrete from helicopter

Key quote
"One of the cable cars that had crashed into another one fell from the
cable to the ground shortly afterwards, but all the people who had been
underneath were no longer in the way." - Eyewitness Juergen Huffel

Story in full
AT LEAST nine people, six of them children, died yesterday when a
helicopter accidentally dropped a massive concrete block on to a cable
car in the Austrian Alps.

One gondola hurtled to the ground and passengers were thrown from
nearby cable cars after the load struck.

All of the dead appeared to be members of a German tour group,
according to Edelbert Kohler, the head of police in Innsbruck.

The accident occurred in the ski-resort town of Soelden, 25 miles
south-west of Innsbruck and some 300 miles west of Vienna.

The helicopter was hauling goods to the top of the cable-car lift for
construction work when a huge chunk of concrete came loose and fell, Mr
Kohler said.

"It was just terrible," one female eyewitness told Austrian radio.
"There were bodies broken like rag dolls and this awful moaning from
people whose limbs were broken and twisted from the fall.

"It was a terrible keening echoing through the mountain tops. It seemed
there were some very young children lying there."

Four people were injured in the accident, while three others in the
cable cars escaped injury, said Jakob Falkner, an executive of the
cable car company.

But Red Cross officials claimed seven people were injured - five of
them seriously.

Local media reports said the concrete weighed about 1,500 pounds.

Mr Kohler initially said it appeared that the chunk hit the cable,
causing the gondolas to swing out of control, throwing the victims out.


But Mr Falkner told Austrian state television that the concrete
directly hit one of the cable cars - a version later confirmed by Mr
Kohler.

A dozen rescue helicopters hovered over the scene of the accident,
while dozens of emergency workers rushed to the site on foot.

The glacier skiing area around Soelden - some of it almost 10,000 feet
high - is popular with summer tourists, who flock to its perennially
snow-covered peaks.

The accident happened shortly after 1pm local time, near the 11,000ft
Schwarze Schneid mountain station - the goal for the helicopter's load.


Police said the helicopter had permission to transport the massive
concrete blocks, which were to be used as the foundations for a new
mobile phone and radar tower, but that a criminal investigation is now
under way to discover what went wrong.

The cable car was taking the skiers between the Rettenbach and
Tiefenbach glaciers when the concrete block fell from 900 feet above.

"It must have come down with the force of a high- explosive bomb," said
a police spokesman.

Juergen Huffel, a tourist at the scene, said: "Yellow rescue
helicopters swarmed in. There were loads of medical personnel on the
ground within minutes.

"They realised very quickly just what a disaster it had been. One of
the cable cars that had crashed into another one fell from the cable to
the ground shortly afterwards, but all the people who had been
underneath were no longer in the way."

Gottlieb Huetter, a police spokesman, said: "The people and cars fell
about 15 metres. The injuries of some survivors were quite bad. People
were flung out of the cars when they collided due to the vibration on
the cables."

The cars can hold up to eight passengers at a time and are glassed in.

Mr Huetter added: "The passengers would not know what had hit them. It
was like being bombed."

Roy Knaus, the head of the Heli Alpin Knaus helicopter company, said he
believed the pilot had had no idea that he had lost part of his load.

Carl Ferrari-Brunnenfeld, a spokesman for the Austrian transport
ministry, described the incident as a "tragic accident" and said it
showed "how important it is that all safety procedures are strictly
adhered to".

He added that cargo helicopters do not need special permission to take
to the air and that the company is responsible for securing the
materials they are transporting.

Just last year 113 passengers on the same lift had to be rescued and
abseiled to safety when an empty cabin got stuck and later crashed to
the ground.

The rescue operation last November, which took place at more than 160
feet in the air, lasted for several hours, but nobody was hurt.

Yesterday's accident evoked memories of another airborne ski-lift
tragedy in neighbouring Italy, where a low-flying United States marine
jet sliced a ski gondola's cables in 1998, killing 20 people.

The EA-6B Prowler severed the cable carrying a ski gondola near
Cavalese in the Italian Alps, causing the 20 people aboard to plunge
more than 350ft to their deaths.

Austria was hit by another Alpine tragedy five years ago when fire
swept through a crowded funicular railway carriage on 11 November,
2000, as it carried 167 skiers, snowboarders and a driver through a
tunnel up the Kitzsteinhorn glacier near Kaprun. Only 12 people
survived the disaster.

Many of the victims could be identified only weeks later after analysis
of their DNA.

Sixteen people, including carriage operators, technicians and
government officials, who prosecutors said were responsible for the
fire, were acquitted last year of criminal negligence over the blaze.

Bryan "The Monk" Chaisone