More than 1,000 tourists stranded on a mountain in Nagano Prefecture after lightning hit a cable car system were brought down safely by early Monday morning on cable cars run by a standby motor.
The last group out of the 1,050 tourists was brought down from the 2,956-meter Mount Komagatake at around 3:45 a.m., nearly 14 hours after the cable car system was paralyzed, according to the operator, Chuo Alps Co.
It took hours to transport the tourists down as the two cars on the cable car system, each with a capacity of 61 people, took 40 minutes to go down the mountain on the standby motor. The regular run takes 7 1/2 minutes.