On the morning of January 8, in the Yunding Ski Park in Chongli District, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, a seven or eight-year-old child fell from a cable car.
Online videos showed a child wearing a pink ski suit slipping from the seat of the cable car and hanging in mid-air, with adults around trying to reach out to help. After more than ten seconds, the child eventually fell into the forest below. Visitors were heard exclaiming in shock, “Oh my goodness!”
Mr. Li, who filmed the incident, told Purple Cow News that he was sitting behind the child in the chairlift, with an adult on each side of the child.
Staff from the Yunding Ski Park rescue center responded to Tide News, saying that the visitor who fell from the cable car was a seven or eight-year-old child, accompanied by the child’s mother on the cable car. The child fell onto the snow, turning blue, but luckily the ground was covered in snow.
At 14:39 on the afternoon of the 8th, the Yunding Ski Park Four Season Resort issued a notice: at 10:36 in the morning on the same day, there was an accident of a visitor falling from the No. 1 cable car at the ski resort. Preliminary checks showed that the child who fell had no obvious injuries and has been sent to the hospital for further examination.
According to an internet user’s post, the child was lying down on the cable car, and before departure, the parents had shouted to stop, but the staff seemed not to have heard.
An eyewitness who was on the same cable car as the child told the Hefei Evening News that the child was lying on the cable car. After the child fell, the eyewitness and the child’s parent tried their best to hold onto the child, but due to the slippery ski suit and gloves the child was wearing, they couldn’t grab hold, leading to the child falling.
Public information shows that the Yunding Ski Resort officially opened in 2012, with a skiing area of over 800,000 square meters, 41 ski slopes, and was the venue for the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events at the 2022 Winter Olympics.