Girl hospitalized after falling from chairlift in California (4 photos + 1 video)

A 16-year-old girl fell from a chairlift at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort in California. Volunteers and staff held the net, but the fall from a 9-meter height turned out to be hard.





Representatives of the resort said that the girl initially sat down incorrectly, so she began to “slip” from the chair. The incident sparked fury among skiers, who accused the ski lift operators of inattention.



“My father and friend saw the girl begin to slide out of the chair and immediately shouted “stop,” but it took the operator almost a minute to stop the lift when the chair was already at a height of about three floors,” a relative of the eyewitnesses wrote on social media.

"As the lift began operating, the guest began to slip from her chair for unknown reasons. Neighbors grabbed and held her until operators stopped the lift. Five resort employees and eight guests immediately responded and installed a rescue net. When the guest slipped from the hands of her chair mates, the net "slowed her fall. The girl was taken to the hospital for evaluation," Mammoth Mountain said in a statement.



However, the skier who was in the next chair and filmed the incident insists that the girl fell past the net.

“The ski patrol let the girl down. Convinced her that everything was fine, but didn’t catch her!” said lunar rock maxx on the social network. “I heard the rescuers say that they had never done this before! Mammoth Mountain needs to do better !"



Three Mammoth Mountain ski patrol officers died while on duty in April 2006 when a volcanic fumarole below them caused a snow bridge to collapse.

Last year, the ski lifts remained open until July because there was no snow at the resort, which sits at an altitude of 2,438 meters and opened in 1953.