Fighting anxiety, they huddled on the broken cable car, gripped by fear as they teetered hundreds of feet into the air.
With little to drink, the six children and two adults endured a 14-hour ordeal stranded above the forests of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
But their pleas for help were answered and, late on Tuesday (22), authorities revealed how they saved the passengers – one by helicopter and the others by zip line – in a rescue operation complicated by the weather.
“The extremely difficult rescue mission was hampered by the strong winds in the area and the hazards involved in such operations, including the helicopter’s rotor blades destabilizing the lift,” the Pakistani armed forces said in a statement.
The cable car, which travels between the villages of Batangi and Jhangri in Battagram District – about four hours from the nearest road – is used to transport children to school, reducing an almost four-hour journey to a matter of minutes.
But what was supposed to be a quick trip turned into a life-or-death scenario after one of the cables snapped, leaving the group stranded some 275 meters above a valley.
With the cable car suspended by what appeared to be a single cable, the military embarked on a mission to rescue those on board, pulling a child by helicopter and bringing the others to safety via a zip line.
Footage released by rescue services captured the moment a child appeared to jump from the cable car, while clinging to the end of a rope dangling from a helicopter, before being taken to safety.
In another video, workers can be seen pulling the two adults onto a zip line after the darkness of the night made air rescue difficult.
Rescuers gave passengers nausea medication after reports of vomiting, and detainees were given heart-related medication, according to Tanveer Ur Rehman, deputy commissioner of Battagram district.
News of the successful rescue reverberated across Pakistan.
“Relieved to hear that Alhamdolillah and all children were successfully and safely rescued. Great teamwork by the military, rescue departments, district administration and also the local people,” wrote Acting Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar.
Cable cars are a regular means of transport for residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where travel between villages can take hours due to dense forests.
The Battagram district, where the cable car is located, is impoverished and lacks infrastructure and development. Families rely on locally built gondolas, some of them made from scrap metal and discarded vans, to travel to school and even to the hospital.
However, these cable cars can lack proper maintenance and have been involved in disasters in the past. In December, 12 children were rescued from another cable car in eastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
That incident prompted Pakistan’s acting prime minister to order all “dilapidated and non-compliant cable cars” to close immediately, according to a statement from his office at the time.
Source: CNN Brasil
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