Whistler Watch

Everyone is safe.

Okay, so at about 2:30pm on Tuesday, December 16, 2008, tower 4 for the Excalibur Gondola collapsed. The tower is essentially two pieces. The lower half is connected to ground, and the upper half holds all the pulleys that hold the cable which carries the car. What seems to have happened is the upper piece and lower pieces separated.

The gondola takes you a large ways up the mountain, but there’s a mid station half way. The upper half and lower half of the Excalibur Gondola are separate cables, so only the lower half of the Gondola was affected. Tower four is about half way to the mid station. The lower half crosses two separate roads, meaning not only was the whole mountain evacuated, but two roads were closed as well. Emergency vehicles were on the scene promptly.

About 50 or so people were stranded on the Gondola and were there for hours before they were safely evacuated. A few people were taken off to the clinic, but from what I understand, there are no serious injuries.

If you check out CTV.ca there are some skewed reports. Also, a lot of people are claiming that a car or truck hit the bottom of the tower. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that’s the case. The lower part of the tower seemed to be in fine condition. It looked as if the bolts came out. It’s still under investigation.

I wanted a little more information, so I called P.R. at Whistler Blackcomb, and was directed to the press release on their website. Take a look at it. This is the only official information we have at the moment.

http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/media/news/season_2008-09/081216.htm

If you have any photos or information that you’d like to send me. Please do. Email me at nick -a-t- whistlerwatch.com.

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Click the images to view a larger version.

This is tower four. As you can see the base of the gondola tower is still intact. The top half of the tower came off and is pinning the left side of the cable down.

Emergency vehicles were at the scene quickly, but there are people in that car. It did take them several hours for them to be evacuated. It was approximately -20 degrees outside. The people were freezing cold inside the car.

Here’s another view of the broken tower pinning down the download cable.

One of the cars was stuck a few meters above the cold, fast flowing river. They were the closest car to the tower.

One of the cars fell on top of a bus shelter. It sat there on the bus shelter for a few hours.

The cable spans across two roads and the bus loop in the village. It could have been a lot worse.

Poor shots of evacuation.

You can see (poorly) that the fire trucks were able to evacuate the cars somewhat simply.

If you’d like to see some video from the scene, please click here.