Defendant collapses during cable car disaster trial

The trial of 16 people charged with negligence in a 2000 alpine cable car fire that killed 155 people was briefly halted today after one of the defendants fainted in court.

The unidentified defendant, a manager at cable car company Gletscherbahnen Kaprun, passed out during witness testimony as the first phase of the trial was concluding.

Judge Manfred Seiss stopped the proceedings for 30 minutes while the defendant was revived before ordering the trial to resume.

The current phase is to end on Friday, and the trial is to resume on September 2 after a summer break.

Sixteen defendants - cable car operators, technicians and government officials - are being tried for their roles in the November 11, 2000, inferno in Kaprun, 60 miles south of Salzburg.

The fire broke out as a crowded cable car carried 161 skiers, snowboarders and a driver up the Kitzsteinhorn glacier through a tunnel. Only a few managed to escape.

British ski instructor, Kevin Challis, 40, from Bridport, Dorset, was among the dead after he offered his seat on an earlier train to an elderly man.

Salzburg’s public prosecutor, Eva Danniger-Soriat, has said ‘‘a mosaic of mistakes’’ led to Austria’s deadliest peacetime disaster.

Investigators traced the blaze to a defective and illegally installed space heater that caused hydraulic brake oil in nearby pipes to overheat.

The scalding oil dripped onto the cable car’s plastic-coated floor and set it ablaze, filling the carriage with flames and toxic smoke.