Verdict awaited in cable car inferno trial

The families of 155 people killed more than three years ago in a cable car inferno at an Alpine resort are awaiting a verdict in the trial of officials and technicians suspected of failing to ensure the safety of their passengers.

Judge Manfred Seiss will decide in Salzburg today whether 16 suspects - including cable car company officials, technicians and government inspectors - were responsible for conditions that allowed a faulty heater to cause the blaze on November 11, 2000, which killed all but a dozen skiers in the crowded cabin.

All 16 suspects have pleaded innocent to charges of negligence. If convicted, they face sentences of up to five years in prison.

Most victims were skiers and snowboarders from Austria and Germany. Eight were Americans, including a family of four and a newly engaged couple. Others were from Japan, Slovenia, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. The youngest victim was a six-year-old boy.

Also among the dead was British ski instructor Kevin Challis, from Dorset. He had given up his spot to an old man on the previous cable car, which his eight-year-old daughter Siobhán was on.

She waited for her father at the top of the Kitzsteinhorn glacier when smoke began billowing from the tunnel mouth.

Only 12 people managed to escape the carriage as it turned into a fireball inside a tunnel on the side of the Kitzsteinhorn glacier near the popular Kaprun resort, 60 miles south of Salzburg. Many of the victims could only be identified weeks later after analysis of their DNA.

During a trial lasting more than 18 months, the judge has heard how the blaze spread through the carriage in minutes.

Thomas Kraus told the court last year how he smashed a rear window of the carriage and threw himself into the darkness of the tunnel.

Another survivor, Manfred Hiltel, said he needed to take medication for a year before he was able to overcome the trauma and return to work.

Others were less fortunate. Investigators told the court that the driver was unable to open the doors as the fire spread. When he did open the doors, many of those who tried to escape upward through the tunnel were killed by toxic fumes from the blazing car, investigators said.

The prosecution alleges that officials from the company which ran the cable car, the manufacturers and installers of the heater and government officials who carried out safety inspections were responsible for allowing the inferno to happen by neglecting to check into what a simple fault could do.