Work on Sentosa’s new cable car service partly suspended after cabin fell down 45m on Sunday

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http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/cable-car-work-partly-put-hold-probe-begins

Work on Sentosa’s new cable car service has been partially suspended following Sunday’s incident in which an empty cabin was dislodged and fell more than 40m to the ground.

The two contractors involved in the project — Austrian firm Doppelmayr and the Singapore branch of Hong Kong-based Gammon Construction — are assisting the authorities investigating the incident, which also left a worker in another cabin stuck in mid-air for about three hours.

Yesterday, more details emerged about how the incident had occurred.

Mr Ekkehard Assmann, Doppelmayr’s head of marketing and public relations, told TODAY over email that the incident happened at around 4pm on Sunday during assembly work on the eight-passenger mono-cable gondola.

Staff from the company’s sub-contractor were conducting adjustment work and working on the telecommunications cable when a cabin was caught in one of the assembly ropes while it was passing a tower.

“As a consequence, (the cabin) detached from the haul rope and fell to the ground,” he said, adding that the rope — which had been put up last week — had not snapped.

He said there was no one in the area under the cabin when it fell from a height of 45m, as the site is closed off during construction. “Experts are currently working on a detailed reconstruction of the incident,” he said.

Construction for the new 860m-long intra-island cableway, slated for completion in the first quarter next year, will allow visitors to shuttle between Sentosa’s three main clusters of attractions at Merlion Plaza, Imbiah Lookout and Siloso Point.

The Sentosa Development Corporation said work on the cableway systems has been suspended, while construction of the cableway stations is unaffected and will continue. Both the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Manpower Ministry are investigating the matter.

The BCA noted that this was a localised incident and does not have any impact on the existing cable car system between Mount Faber and Sentosa.

No one was injured in the incident and the worker trapped in the other cabin was rescued after the Singapore Civil Defence Force and on-site engineers assessed it to be safe to move the halted cabin to Imbiah Station.