Astonishing new footage has captured the moment passengers held on to dear life inside a stranded cable car for 16 hours in Pakistan before they were rescued.
The drone footage obtained by BBC visibly shows the terrified passengers — six children and two adults — clinging to whatever they can grab as the carriage dangles precariously at an angle high above the remote Allai valley in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
It took 12 hours for the passengers to be rescued during an operation that included a military helicopter and zip wire experts.
The group was using the chairlift to access a school when a cable broke at a height of up to 365 metres midway through the journey.
The children were rescued first, with the adults the last to be plucked free.
On Twitter, now known as X, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kak said he was “relived” after the safe rescue.
“Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people.”
The owner of the cable car company in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was later arrested by police on multiple charges including negligence and endangering valuable lives.
Cable cars common in Pakistan
Makeshift cable cars are common in parts of Pakistan. They enable journeys over valleys that would otherwise take hours to be completed in just minutes.
A video of an early rescue showed a child strapped into a harness swinging from underneath a helicopter as crowds cheer in the background.
Several military helicopters had earlier in the day flown reconnaissance sorties and an airman was lowered by harness to deliver food, water and medicine, Tanveer Ur Rehman, a local government official, told AFP.
“This is a delicate operation that demands meticulous accuracy. The helicopter cannot approach the chairlift closely, as its downwash (air pressure) might snap the sole chain supporting it,” he said.
Anxious crowds gathered on both sides of the ravine, which is several hours from any sizeable town.
“Every time the helicopter lowered the rescuer closer to the chairlift, the wind from the helicopter would shake and disbalance the chairlift making the children scream in fear,” Ghulamullah, chairman of the Allai valley area, told Geo News.
The chairlift broke down at around 7am Tuesday, with residents using mosque loudspeakers to alert neighbourhood officials across the Allai valley.
‘Considering jumping down’
On Wednesday the three students walked two hours to school along a hilly path to find out they had passed their exams, before they sought further medical check-ups.
Some of the passengers told AFP that several times they lost hope in ever being rescued, and had considered leaping from the chairlift.
“Some of the children were so frustrated and were considering to jump down, but the elder passenger gave us confidence,” 15-year-old Rizwan Ullah told AFP.
“When the cable car was twisting, we were terrified and we started reciting the Koran and gave confidence to each other not to jump down.”
Gul Faraz, a 25-year-old shopkeeper who was in the cable car, said when the helicopter arrived (to deliver food and water) and left without rescue, they lost hope,
“During the whole process we thought we would die. There were some times when we thought we would not survive,” he said.
Syed Hammad Haider, a senior Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial official, said the gondola was hanging about 1,000 to 1,200 feet above the ground.
The daring rescue finally began at dusk with a helicopter plucking a child from the chairlift but the chopper was forced back to base as bad weather closed in and night fell.
Then, commandos from Pakistan’s Special Service Group (SSG) — known as the Maroon Berets — and local experts used the cable keeping the gondola from plunging into the valley as a zip line to rescue the rest of those stranded.
Chairlifts to be inspected
Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar issued a directive for all chairlifts in mountainous areas to be inspected and for those that are not “safety compliant” to be immediately closed.
Cable cars that carry passengers and sometimes cars are common across the northern areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Gilgit-Baltistan, and are vital in connecting villages and towns in areas where roads cannot be built.
In 2017, 10 people were killed when a chairlift cable broke, sending passengers plunging into a ravine in a mountain hamlet near the capital Islamabad.
– with AFP