06:30 AM
A serious emergency within the metrocable was recorded this Wednesday morning at the Popular station, lAfter one of the cabins fell onto the main square of this place. Authorities initially reported 10 people injured, four of them inside the crashed cabin.
The events were recorded around 4:30 in the morning, when the system was just about to begin providing service, apparently, after one of the cabins derailed. This fact also left another cabin at risk of collapse, according to the first versions.
Personnel from the Medellín Fire Department went to the site to treat the injured and transfer seven of them to the San Vicente Foundation Hospital, the León XIII Clinic and the CES Clinic. The other people were assessed on site.
Find out: Collision of metrocable cabins left no injuries
Additionally, Medellín Metro personnel are on site attending to the emergency with the Line K system of the metro system, which will be suspended indefinitely while the damages are repaired and the corresponding investigations are carried out.
Outside of the injured people, More than 90 users of the system were trapped inside the cabins stopped along the entire route and with the help of the respective authorities, progress is being made to remove them from each of the cabins, according to official information.
The first hypotheses of this emergency would account for a collision between two cable cabinscausing one of them to fall, although this version remains to be confirmed by the Medellín Metro.
This is the first accident of this type that has been recorded on this metrocable line since it came into operation on August 7, 2004, being the first means of transportation of this type that provides commercial service for the country. Subsequently, the strategy was replicated in other cities in Colombia and around the world.
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On this cable line, the only thing that had happened of this severity occurred on March 25, 2017, when two cable cabins collided with each other inside the Acevedo station, a fact that left no people injured.
However, a problem had already occurred with a system cable when the construction of Line P, better known as Cable Picacho, was being done, on January 7, 2020. The incident left 10 people injured, all of them passers-by who were passing along the North Highway at the time the cable fell, at the time when the cable adjustments were being made to begin the initial tests.
This situation will not cause any inconvenience in the provision of the Arví Cable, that connects with this Metrocable line, nor with the other cable lines that operate in the city, although the Medellín Metro will carry out reviews to avoid similar situations.
The mass transportation company reported that since the early hours of this Monday morning a contingency plan was activated to transport the inhabitants of the area, in which the Route C6-017 will modify its route and will integrate into the Acevedo and Santo Domingo stations.
