Jharkhand ropeway incident: why rescue ops took so long?

After almost 48 hours since multiple cable cars collided on India's highest vertical ropeway in Jharkhand's Deoghar district leaving almost 70 people stranded mid-air, the rescue operations still continued.

The people dangling mid-air were finally rescued leaving 3 dead after two sleepless nights without proper food and uncertainty about their chances of survival.

Why did it take so long to get the stranded people out of the cable cars?

Before going into that, let's know a bit about what really happened that brought the ropeway to a halt.

Multiple cable cars collided at about 4 pm on April 10 due to a malfunction of India's highest ropeway connecting the Trikut hills.

The ropeway is reportedly privately operated and the operators fled the site after the incident.

Rescue operations started soon after by the combined teams of Indian Air Force, Army, ITBP, NDRF and district administration.

The rescue operations taking almost 2 days to complete have multiple reasons. The biggest one being the topography.

The difficult terrain posed the biggest hindrance in the rescue operations as the ropeway runs through a picturesque yet densely forested area surrounded by hills.

Also watch: Major ropeway accidents in India since 2003

This leaves the entire stretch to be accessible just by air with the trolleys being suspended at heights of almost 1500 feet.

The angle of the ropeway also posed a problem as it was difficult for the Air Force chopper to get too close amid fears of getting entangled in the wires or cutting them resulting in large number of fatalities.

The Trikut ropeway is around 766-metre long according to the Jharkhand government.