The rescue of six schoolchildren and two adults who were plucked from a broken cable car that was dangling precariously hundreds of meters above a steep gorge was a miracle, a survivor said yesterday.
The teenager said he and the others felt repeatedly that death was imminent during the 16-hour ordeal.
The eight passengers were pulled from the cable car after several rescue attempts on Tuesday. One of the youngest children was grabbed by a commando attached to a helicopter by rope. A video of the rescue shows the rope swaying wildly as the child, secured by a harness, is pulled into the helicopter.
Photo: Pakistan’s Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) via AFP
As the helicopters could not fly after sunset, rescuers constructed a makeshift chairlift from a wooden bed frame and ropes and approached the cable car using the one cable that was still intact, local police chief Nazir Ahmed said.
In the final stage of the risky operation, just before midnight on Tuesday, rescuers and volunteers pulled a rope to lower the chairlift to the ground. Joyful shouts of “God is great” erupted as the chairlift came into view, carrying two boys in traditional white robes.
“I had heard stories about miracles, but I saw a miraculous rescue happening with my own eyes,” said 15-year-old Osama Sharif, one of the six boys who were in the cable car.
Locally made cable cars are a widely used form of transportation in the mountainous Battagram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Gliding across steep valleys, they cut down travel time, but often are poorly maintained. Every year people die or are injured while traveling in them.
On Tuesday morning, the six boys got into the cable car to travel to their school across the ravine from their village. Osama said he was headed to school to receive the result of his final exam.
“We suddenly felt a jolt, and it all happened so suddenly that we thought all of us are going to die,” Osama said in a telephone interview.
He said some of the children and the two adults had cellphones and started making calls. Worried parents tried to reassure the children.
“They were telling us don’t worry, help is coming,” he said.
Ahmed said the children received oxygen as a precaution before being handed over to their parents, many of whom burst into tears of joy.
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