Two helicopters will be sent to Balea Lake in Romania’s Fagaras Mountains to bring down the 72 tourists who got stuck there on Tuesday after the cable car broke down. The cable car’s operator won’t be able to fix it today and there are no other means of transport to and from Balea Lake, as the high altitude road Transfagarasan is closed due to the snow and high avalanche risk.

“We have just made the decision (to send the helicopters – e.n.) because the cable car won’t be fixed today and we don’t know if it will be fixed tomorrow. There is no other solution. There are many tourists, some of whom are children, who are not properly equipped to be taken down by foot or other means. We can only get them down by helicopter,” said Raed Arafat, state secretary within the Ministry of Interior quoted by Agerpres.

The helicopters will take the tourists down to Cartisoara, a nearby village, where the emergency situations department ISU Sibiu will set up a heated tent. Medical emergency personnel from SMURD will assess the tourists’ health condition and, if needed, take them to the hospital, according to ISU Sibiu.

The 72 tourists got stuck at Balea Lake, more than 2,000 meters up the mountain, after the cable car broke down on Tuesday around noon. Among them there are several Portuguese students. Two cabins near Balea Lake accommodated the tourists and offered them a hot meal. A few Israeli tourists ventured to go down on Tuesday evening by snowmobile, despite the high avalanche risk on Transfagarasan.

The cable car has a malfunction in the engine room and a team of specialists from Brasov will be brought to fix it, according to Lidia Badila, a spokesperson for the company that operates the installation. The cable car that goes up from Balea Cascada to Balea Lac on a distance of 3.7 kilometers is the only means of transportation available at this time of year.

Balea Lake (or Balea Lac) is one of the most popular winter destinations in Romania, also due to the famous Hotel of Ice, which is built every year using ice from the lake. Many foreign tourists, especially from England and Germany, come to the Hotel of Ice to spend one or more nights in the frozen rooms or in the separate igloos.

About 31 English tourists apparently checked into the Hotel of Ice on Monday, according to the hotel’s representatives quoted by Agerpres.

However, the 72 tourists who got stuck up the mountain were mainly day tourists who had no accommodation.

You can watch a live video feed from Balea Lake below:

editor@romania-insider.com