POV chairlift accident!!

Seems to be quite a few chairlift related accidents is south america this year!! this is crazy scary


http://unofficialnetworks.com/2014/...fts-fall-off-the-cable-in-bariloche-argentina

Hope they are alright, especially the guy in black adjusting his boots that was almost directly under the chair when it fell. I can't find him later in the video

Wow that was crazy!

Screen capture of paused video

That is amazing that the cable was riding on the catches. Good thing they went down attached to the cable. Most likely saved them from some serious injuries.

I wonder if the reason it derailed is because the chair clamp (or what every its called) pushed the cable up over the catches. The pic seems to show that the chair derailed about the same time it was crossing the support.

And people think Magic's lifts are unsafe!

Most new lifts have (or should have) an anemometer (wind speed meter) on the towers that will stop or at least slow down the lift if the gusts exceed a pre-defined threshold. If this lift even slowed down a little bit, the cable catcher should have been able to stop the haul rope from completely jumping off the sheave train.

Unless those winds had just kicked up, that lift should have been a wind hold to begin with. Given that particular resorts track record though I think they chose to ignore it.

That accident actually happened last season, according to the translation below the video in that link. I guess the people who recorded that video chose to sit on it to "persuade" management to have better maintenance on their lifts. When that resort had another accident this year, they chose to release it.

A question that comes to my mind is - How many wind related chair derailments are there per year?

I would guess very few. At least in the USA, The number is really low. Did we only have one last year up in Maine? And I'm not sure that was related to wind.

mbedle said:

I would guess very few. At least in the USA, The number is really low. Did we only have one last year up in Maine? And I'm not sure that was related to wind.

Click to expand...

Are you referring to spillway east at the loaf? That was all the way back in 2010. I can't think of any more recent than that. That was caused due to wind though.

Whistler has a tower break in half on their gondola, that was due to pressure from ice that built up in the tower though