Industry News
A landslide that fell onto the only access road to a ski resort in southern France on Tuesday has left around 2,000 people, many of them holidaymakers, trapped reports thelocal.fr.
Monts d’Olmes ski resort in the Occitan district of Ariège is currently unreachable by land, the only access road to the popular ski spot called the Ramier was blocked on Tuesday at around 8 pm by a landslide of mud, branches, and rock debris. A combination of rain and snow over recent days is thought to be the cause of the mudslide.
Rescue teams in Ariège have been working since Tuesday night to clear the road and expect to have recovered access to Monts d’Olmes by Wednesday evening.
For the skiers trapped at the resort, there isn’t even the possibility of hitting the slopes, as authorities have decided to close shop for the day because emergency services could not gain access if there were an accident.
The whole district of Ariège was also on orange alert for avalanche risk up until Wednesday morning, with authorities still asking skiers to take precautions with off-piste skiing.
This isn’t the first time this season that holidaymakers have been trapped in a resort. Huge storms in the Alps earlier in the year resulted in 13,000 tourists being trapped in Zermatt, Switzerland with the only way out by helicopter.
