Sugarloaf ski area is facing an enormous evacuation. A gust of wind broke the lift. The Sugarloaf ski lift brought 5 seats down forty feet and trapped 100 others. Trapped skiers are being separately lowered from the lift. Emergency response teams are estimating two hours to get everyone down. I imagine the resort will probably take out a huge payday loan to repair their lift.
Sugarloaf ski lift collapses and smashes
An enormous gust of wind hit the Sugarloaf ski area at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday. The cables derailed with the Spillway East Slope lift. Many skiers were hurt as five chairs were thrown 30 to 40 feet down to the snow. There were about one hundred skiers that could not leave the lift. This morning, the wind got up to 20 and 30 miles per hour at the Sugarloaf ski area. The temperature ended up being between 8 and 10 degrees. That means skiers ended up stranded and worried about the cold.
Severe injuries not an issue at Sugarloaf
Though the ski lift failure at Sugarloaf injured several skiers, nobody was critically injured. Sugarloaf was at a “condition yellow” as outlined by Emergency Management for Franklin County, Maine which means there were no deaths or severe traumas. The ski patrol got some help from emergency management crews. This helped get the Sugarloaf Spillway lift clear of skiers. Estimates said that it would take between 90 minutes and 2 hrs to evacuate all of the skiers off the lift.
What the Sugarloaf ski lift evacuation looks like
Ropes and harnesses were used to do the Sugarloaf ski lift evacuation. Teams are throwing ropes over the broken-down ski lift and harnessing skiers to slide down. Skiers are getting from the lift with their skis and everything else even though the procedure is described as “much like rock climbing” by many. The Spillway East will shut down in the Sugarloaf ski resort for a while. This will take weeks to repair the lift, though it may be done faster. All over the coast there have been power outages and shut down cities while this is just the most recent news from the East Coast blizzard.
Citations
WMTV
wmtw.com/r/26299543/detail.html
CNN
news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/28/skiers-fall-from-chairlift-at-maine-resort/?npt=NP1
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