Cable Car Fire Claims 170 in Austrian Tunnel

Fire and smoke raced through a packed cable car carrying skiers through a 2-mile-long tunnel here Saturday, trapping and killing at least 170 passengers in an inferno so intense that nothing was left but the car’s undercarriage and the incinerated remains of victims.

At least eight German skiers managed to escape the disaster--described by officials in this winter playground as the nation’s worst ever--after one of them smashed open a window of the car and a lucky few fumbled their way through billowing smoke to the nearer tunnel opening below.

A hospital in nearby Zell am See reported that it had treated 18 people for smoke inhalation and other injuries, although emergency response workers said they were aware of only eight survivors from the car itself. At least three people waiting for the car at the upper end of the tunnel were suffocated by the rush of smoke and flames to the air source, in what one official described as “a chimney effect.”

Most of the doomed passengers apparently were felled by the smoke and noxious gases before they could get out of the car, which was said to lack sprinklers and emergency door openers.

With air fueling the blaze through the lower opening of the tunnel and rushing toward the chair-lift station above, “there was just too little time for many to save themselves,” said Franz Schwab, head of the rescue operation.

Among those still unaccounted for in the resort after nightfall were 25 Americans from two U.S. military ski clubs in Germany, one from Wuerzburg that included two children and another from Kaiserslautern, which had located all but two of its 81 participants. Because Friday was the Veterans Day holiday for U.S. service personnel, many took advantage of the long weekend to go skiing, said Jim Boyle, a spokesman for the U.S. armed forces in Europe, speculating that other Americans might also have been in Kaprun.

Many of the victims were believed to be teenagers from the surrounding region drawn to the popular glacier resort on the 10,570-foot Kitzsteinhorn by a snowboarding promotion that had filled this idyllic village to capacity even though the high season has yet to begin. Late autumn sunshine illuminated the towering Alps in the picture-postcard valley as soon as day broke, probably encouraging many of the sports enthusiasts to rise early to board the ill-fated run up the mountain at 9 a.m.

Emergency response teams wearing gas masks walked through the tunnel once the fire burned itself out and determined that there were no more survivors, Schwab said. Recovery operations were then suspended because darkness had fallen and the tunnel could not be made safe for those charged with the grim task of retrieving the bodies, he said.

The tragedy, the latest in a recent spate of tunnel fires and avalanches to blight the usual sporting revelry in the Alps, struck on the first crowded run of the cable car taking skiers and snowboarders to a glacier recreation area. The year-round ski resort and the transport serving it were state-of-the-art in 1974, when they were built, but were unequipped for the accidents that newer conveyances must be prepared for.

Ground station workers were alerted to the accident shortly after 9 a.m., when the cable car operator radioed that “the train is burning.” But he was unable to provide more details of what was transpiring before apparently being overcome by smoke and burned to death with an estimated 170 others, Salzburg regional Gov. Franz Schausberger told journalists at the sports school here, which had been converted to an emergency response headquarters.

The capacity of the car, which was built like a set of wide stairs on which travelers stood for the 8 1/2-minute journey, was 180 people, and it was full, Schausberger reported.

Police and emergency workers quickly compiled a list of all 2,500 visitors registered at hotels and holiday homes in the popular resort and began checking off the names of those who were found to have returned to their accommodations. Hotlines were established within two hours of the accident for worried friends and relatives to check whether their loved ones had been found safe after the slopes closed.

But the list of those still unaccounted for is far longer than the number believed to have died in the blaze, and it will probably take at least another day or two to reliably identify the victims, said Rosemarie Drexler, chief administrator for the county in which Kaprun is located.

“It’s going to take some time. We know this from past tragedies, and I don’t think anything of this magnitude has ever happened before in Austria. It’s just horrible,” she said as she watched over the chaotic comings and goings of a team that already had shifted from rescue to retrieval.

None of the bodies were removed from the disaster scene, said Schwab, who added that the initial inspection of the charred tunnel showed that some passengers had made their way out of the car but probably were overcome by smoke when they tried to flee the longer way uphill.

The cause of the fire was still said to be unknown, and technical experts familiar with the workings of the car, which is drawn by overhead cables from the base station through the heart of the mountain at a 45-degree slope, said they knew of no electrical wiring or equipment that could set off such a fierce blaze.

“It might have been caused by something a passenger brought on board,” transport engineer Klaus Eisenkolb, who has worked on similar ski transport equipment, told Germany’s ARD television, suggesting that fireworks could have ignited such a conflagration.

Ski resort cable cars usually are packed solid with passengers, and the mostly synthetic clothing worn by skiers could easily have caught fire from a sizable ignition and added to the suffocating fumes. Investigators also were looking into possible electrical malfunctions.

The only bodies brought down the mountain to this village, which was bathed in the light of a full moon after nightfall, were those of three cable line workers who died of smoke inhalation while waiting at the destination terminal at the 7,900-foot level of the mountain. From there, a network of chair lifts and gondolas takes skiers up the slopes of the glacier.

“Why us? Why so many?” a local deacon, Peter Hofer, asked the 100 mourners who gathered for an impromptu memorial at the town’s fire station. “God is with us in our sadness, in our need and in our pain.”

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel declared two days of national mourning and ordered flags across the country flown at half-staff. President Thomas Klestil addressed his shocked citizens on television to express sympathy for the victims and their families.

The fire was the second major blow to the region this year. In March, 12 winter sports enthusiasts were killed in an avalanche in the nearby Muehlbachtal ski area.

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Alpine Inferno

When a fire broke out Saturday in a cable car being pulled through an Alpine tunnel, at least 170 people were killed, trapped deep within the mountain.

1. A steel cable hoists the car, packed to its 180-person capacity, up a steep ramp and into the side of the Kitzsteinhorn, one of Kapruns peaks.

2. The car stalls 600 yards into the tunnel as operator radios that the train is burning. The fire spreads quickly through the car.

3. Drafts sucked through the tunnel feed the flames in the car, hampering rescue efforts. Some victims die of smoke inhalation while running up the tunnel in the same direction as the smoke.