Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Victims flee cable car, climb into deadly smoke

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Sunday, November 12, 2000

Victims flee cable car, climb into deadly smoke
About 170 people die inside tunnel in the Austrian Alps after car catches fire on Saturday
By Melissa Eddy
Associated Press
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.
   Most of the victims apparently managed to escape the burning car but were killed by acrid smoke as they tried to flee by running upward on narrow stairs leading out of the tunnel, said Manfred Mueller, the head of cable car technical operations. The few survivors among the 180 people on board apparently ran the opposite way, evading most of the smoke being blown upward by strong drafts pushing through the tunnel.
   "Most of them were youths," Salzburg Gov. Franz Schausberger said of those who died in an interview with state television. "Today is a day of mourning."
   Rescuers were unable to reach the car as the fire raged for hours, sending smoke spewing from the mouth of the tunnel below. The blaze burned the car down to the chassis, firefighters said.
   An area hospital said 18 Germans and Austrians were brought in by ambulance - apparently nine who escaped from the car and nine more who were waiting just inside the tunnel entrance to board the next car going up, hospital officials said. All suffered cuts, bruises and the effects of smoke inhalation. Two were in critical condition, while three had left the hospital by evening.
   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 killed 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.
   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. It was unclear whether the Americans had been aboard.
   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.
   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 600 yards inside the tunnel.
   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.

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