BOGOTÁ — At least one person died and 12 others were injured Wednesday when a cable car cabin collapsed in Medellín, Colombia’s second city, local authorities reported.
The elevated cabin fell to the station platform when it was transporting 10 people, indicated the mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez, on his X account, formerly Twitter.
The manager of the Medellín metro, Tomás Elejalde, said in statements to the press that a person died after what he described as an unusual accident, being the first time it has occurred in the operational history of that transportation system that has operated for more than two decades.
The accident occurred in the northeastern area of Medellin, where the cable car system operates, when a cabin collided with another at the station entrance and became detached from the cable, Elejalde said without specifying the height at which it fell to the ground.
The director of the Administrative Department of Disaster Risk Management, Carlos Andrés Quintero, indicated in a video released to the press that they helped 21 people, of whom 12 were transferred to care centers and one died.
Quintero pointed out that while the relief efforts were underway, about 200 people remained in the 40 cabins that were in the transportation system and were then evacuated.
The subway manager indicated that apparently there is no general failure of the entire transportation system and that they preliminarily identified a specific problem in one of the cabins. He added that they will carry out an investigation into what happened.
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