The manufacturer of the gondola lift that partially collapsed on B.C.'s Blackcomb Mountain on Tuesday says a North America-wide warning about the potential problem of "ice-jacking" will be issued to other lift operators.
A spokesman for Doppelmayr says its customers will be informed about the chance of ice seeping into the lift towers and rupturing them-- similar to what happens when a water-filled bottle is left in the freezer.
A total of 53 skiers and snowboarders were stranded in sub zero temperatures for several hours on the Excalibur Gondola lift when the tower collapsed. Twelve riders suffered minor injuries, the most major being a fractured vertebrae.
Back to business
Whistler Blackcomb says ten lifts on both mountains of the resort are back open Thursday.
The British Columbia Safety Authority (BCSA) completed a secondary inspection of mountain lifts Wednesday afternoon and gave the go-ahead for the resort to continue regular lift operations.
"There is no justification at this time that other installations operating at Whistler Blackcomb have been effected by a similar failure," Greg Paddon, safety manager from the BC Safety Authority, told a press conference Wednesday.
The Excalibur gondola will remain closed until further notice.
Doug Forseth, senior vice-president of operations for the resort, told reporters Wednesday he has confidence in the safety systems in place at the resort but acknowledged that the incident may leave some people wondering.
"We're going to work very hard to restore the confidence for those, where it's been damaged," Forseth said.
Resort to be used in 2010
The Whistler-Blackcomb resort will play host to the alpine events at the 2010 Winter Games. All of the events will take place on Whistler Mountain, not Blackcomb where the accident occurred.
Many feared the collapse had occurred on the new $52 million Peak-to-Peak lift, connecting the peak of Whistler Mountain to the peak of Blackcomb Mountain. It's the highest in the world at 436 metres above the ground.
Past problems
The incident on the Excalibur, which was installed in 1994, is not the first ski lift accident at the resort.
In 1995, an accident on Whistler's Quicksilver lift killed two men, and injured nine others.
The high-speed lift was ferrying skiers to the top of the mountain when a chair slipped on a cable and slammed into another, sending four chairs crashing into the rocks three storeys below.
A coroner's report said the accident was a result of systemic failure, noting problems with the lift system's grip mechanisms should have been detected in advance.
With files from The Canadian Press
