The accident
The accident occurred late in the morning near the valley station of the Goldknopf ski lift. The two friends from Ortisei had come up to the plateau from Val Gardena for a day on the snow. Around 11.40 the two women got on the chairlift, a modern four-seater system with automatic release, which allows skiers to take a seat while the system travels at reduced speed and accelerates again only after departure. For reasons still to be clarified, after a few seconds of travel, at the height of the third pylon the two women fell into the void, ending up on the ski slope. The accident was seen by some skiers who were descending a few meters away at the time. None of them were involved. The Aiut Alpin Dolomites and Pelikan 2 helicopters arrived on site, as did the carabinieri and mountain rescue. The emergency doctor immediately began resuscitation procedures, but the elderly woman died on the spot. The other woman instead suffered a serious polytrauma in the fall and was hospitalized in intensive care at Bolzano hospital.
“Dramatic Event”
In the afternoon the Goldknopf chairlift, renovated just last summer, was back in operation again. The green light confirms that “what happened is not of a technical nature”, said Helmut Sartori, CEO of the company that manages the ski lifts on the Alpe di Siusi, in an interview with the news portal Stol.it. Sartori spoke of a “terrible accident”, the causes of which must now be clarified. As the CEO points out, every winter more than 125 million guests are transported to Alto Adige and on average 6-7 accidents occur per year, none fatal for a long time, “which makes what happened today even more dramatic”, Sartori explained.
