Six children among nine dead in cable car tragedy

Authorities conducting DNA tests of the victims in a cable car accident at a ski resort in western Austria today said six children between the ages of 11 and 13 were among the nine victims.

The members of the German ski group died when a helicopter accidentally dropped a heavy tub used to carry concrete onto a cable car yesterday.

Police said three in the gondola that was struck had died, along with six others catapulted out of a nearby cable car.

Rudolf Koll, a senior official at the Innsbruck prosecutor’s office, told Austria Press Agency the children were between 11 and 13 years old.

Yesterday’s accident was in the ski resort town of Soelden, 25 miles south-west of Innsbruck and some 300 miles west of Vienna.

The helicopter was hauling goods to the top of the cable car lift for construction work, when the tub loosened and fell, said Edelbert Kohler, head of the criminal police in Innsbruck.

Seven people were injured; two were in a critical condition.

The Austria Press Agency said the tub weighed 750 kilograms. It was unclear whether it was loaded. Austrian authorities announced an investigation.

The car that was hit hurtled to the ground, while passengers spilled out of two others nearby that were whipped back and forth by the vibrating cable, said Jakob Falkner, an executive of the cable car company.

The glacier area around Soelden – some of it higher than 3,000 metres – is popular with summer tourists and skiers who flock to its perennially snow-covered alpine peaks.

The accident evoked memories of another airborne ski lift tragedy in neighbouring Italy, where a low-flying US Marine jet sliced a ski gondola’s cables in 1998, killing 20 people.

It appeared to be the worst accident of its kind since 155 skiers and snowboarders died in a November 2000 alpine cable car fire – Austria’s deadliest single winter resort tragedy.