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Child Injured After Chairlifts Collide at Killington

MrMagic

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Killington, Vermont - February 17, 2009

A young child was hospitalized after two chairlifts collided Sunday at Killington.

According to resort officials, one of the chairs was near the top of Bear Mountain, when it hit another chair.

The child went to the hospital with an apparently minor hip injury.

Resort officials say the accident happened after one of the wheels at the top of the chairlift system stopped working and caused the other chair to get tangled.

The lift was closed for the remainder of the day. It was fixed and reopened Monday.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=9850535


anyone have any idea how the chairs hit each other? seem like a rare bizzar crash to me
 

yaraj

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As if watching all the decent snow melt this week over here while I can hardly walk with a monged ankle isn't bad enough.

I've had to spend the last week and next week drinking!
 

drjeff

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I'm still trying to mentally figure out how a fixed grip grip starts acting like a slipping detachable grip (I know that it was a sheave issue) and then is able to stay suspended on the haul rope/sheave/tower cross arm for the 6 to 8 seconds until the next chair comes along????

Weird year for lift incidents! First the Whistler Gondi Tower failure, then the guy getting pantsed by the chair @ Vail and now this.
 

Geoff

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I'm still trying to mentally figure out how a fixed grip grip starts acting like a slipping detachable grip (I know that it was a sheave issue) and then is able to stay suspended on the haul rope/sheave/tower cross arm for the 6 to 8 seconds until the next chair comes along????

It was a double failure. The wheel on the sheave seized up. A grip was poorly attached for whatever reason. With the number of chairs that go off and on every year for service, I figure human error attaching the chair to the haul rope was the most likely cause. ...or an out of spec grip mechanism. It's tough to detect either of those no matter how much visual inspection you do and how much process you have to prevent it.
 

drjeff

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It was a double failure. The wheel on the sheave seized up. A grip was poorly attached for whatever reason. With the number of chairs that go off and on every year for service, I figure human error attaching the chair to the haul rope was the most likely cause. ...or an out of spec grip mechanism. It's tough to detect either of those no matter how much visual inspection you do and how much process you have to prevent it.


Thanks Geoff. So it was the luck of the draw that that particular grip hit the sheave right at/around failure time. That question answered! I'm guessing that every grip on that haul rope has been freshly torqued to spec right now ;)

Now I'm still trying to figure out the mechanics/physics of how the guy at Vail got pantsed! :rolleyes:
 

bvibert

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Sounds like a freaky accident. I hope the child is ok.

Am I the only one who's annoyed that they kept referring to the sheaves as wheels?

I think Geoff must be right, there was a marginal grip in play here as well. I don't see how a seized sheave could cause a grip to fail. I can only guess that the failed sheave was in the middle of a sheave train so that when the grip failed it was able to just rest on top of the frozen sheave while the haul rope passed through it. If a grip were going to fail I guess that would be one of the best case scenarios, beats having that chair sliding down the haul rope towards the chair below it. Does anyone know the manufacturer of the lift?
 

drjeff

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I know Yan had issues with their detachable grips, but, as I understand it, their fixed grips have a good reputation.

I'd venture a guess that it's safe to say that there aren't too many of us here on AZ that haven't ridden a Yan fixed grip chair many times over.
 

bvibert

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I'd venture a guess that it's safe to say that there aren't too many of us here on AZ that haven't ridden a Yan fixed grip chair many times over.

My reply was in response to Zand's claim that the fact that the lift is a Yan was the cause of the problem.

BTW, I wouldn't say that I've ridden a Yan many times over, most of my chair lift riding time is on Borvig's or CTEC's. ;)
 

drjeff

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My reply was in response to Zand's claim that the fact that the lift is a Yan was the cause of the problem.

BTW, I wouldn't say that I've ridden a Yan many times over, most of my chair lift riding time is on Borvig's or CTEC's. ;)

Response not directed at you. Just a general one about the prevalance of Yan's (especially fixed grips - and the ocasional still remaining Yan "franken-lift" retrofitted detachable :rolleyes:) across the ski industry. Pre "detachable debacle" days, they produced and installed a heck of alot of lifts, and it didn't hurt either that 20 odd years ago there were a bunch more lifts on average being installed each year than nowadays.

Here's a link to a list of all of Yan's installs ( http://www.coloradoskihistory.com/chairlift/liftnews/yaninstalls)

heck, on any given weekend, I'm riding a bunch of them as I've got 9 Yan/Yan component lifts to choose from @ Mount Snow :)
 
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