13 tourists trapped in Shimla lift rescued

Thirteen tourists were trapped inside the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Corporation lift here for three hours on Tuesday. The incident occurred at 6 pm when the lift connecting Cart Road with Mall Road got stuck midway. The ordeal ended at 9 pm with all tourists being rescued.

SHO Rattan Chand,who was leading a rescue team,also got stuck for sometime inside the emergency channel lift. No one was hurt. This was perhaps first of its kind incident here, said SP,Shimla,Sonal Agnihotri.

Vineet Kumar,Managing Director of HPTDC which operators the lift as a paid facility,said: Five tourists were rescued by bringing down the lift manually,the rest remained trapped for a longer time as the emergency system failed to work. We kept talking to the trapped tourists,asking them not to panic.

Kumar said he would order an inquiry into the accident.