As an avid skier, I was distraught to read about another terrible chairlift malfunction at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine. The chairlift suddenly started moving swiftly backward. Seven skiers were pretty seriously injured, some of them because they removed their skis and jumped to “safety” from the chairlift, fearing that they would be more severely hurt if they wound up getting spun through the chair housing unit at the bottom. More than 200 people were later evacuated from the chairlift over a 90-minute period.
This isn’t the first time a chairlift malfunctioned at Sugarloaf. In December of 2010, a chairlift cable derailed, dropping 5 chairs violently to the ground. Five adults and three kids were injured in that accident. That time Sugarloaf was at fault for negligent operation of the lift. Sugarloaf paid out-of-court settlements to the victims.
This time the manufacturer of the chairlift – Partek Ski Lifts — is to blame. Engineers believe a design flaw prevented a safety system from locking the chairlift in place after a mechanical failure caused it to begin moving in reverse.