Date: 5/15/00 11:38:46 AM Pacific Daylight Time

It's really weird, Kent...back when I first found this (it was a post on Ed Dames' bulletin board)...well, for some ODD reason I copied it and saved it in my email folder along with the cablecar accident article - they've been sitting there since what...July of last year, something like that. Now, with all this Fatima stuff going on...I thought maybe it was time to remember these two articles, although the AP Vatican article, we could never find it anywhere to verify it, remember? Strange stuff going on, that's for sure!!

ROME (AP)-- The Vatican Observatory will soon make an announcement from its Castel Gandolfo Headquarters concerning certain startling and earth-shaking news discovered by the late astronomers at Pic de Bure Observatory. Vatican astronomers at Castel Gandolfo and Mount Graham International Observatory said the news is grim.

The Vatican Observatory Research Group (VORG) operates the 1.8m Alice P. Lennon Telescope with its Thomas J. Bannan Astrophysics Facility, known together as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), at the Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO) in southeastern Arizona where sky conditions are among the best in the world and certainly the Continental United States.

Cable car accident kills 20 observatory workers in France

Village in shock; cause of sudden plunge unclear

07/02/99

Associated Press

SAINT-ETIENNE-EN-DEVOLUY, France - A gondola carrying workers to a space observatory high in the French Alps ripped away from its cables Thursday and shattered across a rock-studded slope, killing all 20 people aboard and stunning residents of the mountain village below.

In the worst cable car disaster in French history, the private gondola was about one-quarter the way up the mountain when it suddenly fell 262 feet to the ground above Saint-Etienne-en-Devoluy, a small ski resort south of Grenoble.

Many of the village's 500 residents knew at least one person killed.

"The mountains are in mourning today," said Mayor Jean-Marie Bernard. "Nothing could have led us to expect such a disaster."

French television showed pictures of twisted metal bits strewn across the mountainside, with pieces of the gondola's roof still hanging from the cable.

Michel Selaries, the prosecutor for the Hautes-Alpes region, said it was unclear what caused the crash. He said that a judicial investigation would begin next week but that criminal wrongdoing had been ruled out.

The accident was the latest disaster to hit the French Alps, where massive avalanches killed 12 people and swept away 23 chalets on Feb. 9 near the ski resort of Chamonix. A month later, a fire that broke out on a truck in the Mont Blanc tunnel killed 45 people.

The cable car was a private one used primarily by employees of the nearby Pic de Bure space observatory, 400 miles southeast of Paris. It was last serviced in March.

Jean-Charles Simiand, chief representative of the cable car union, told LCI television that the cable car was built in the 1980s, recently passed a safety inspection and "was in perfect working order."

Those killed in the 7:30 a.m. accident included employees of the space observatory and other people going to work there, including construction workers, France Telecom phone company workers and cleaning workers.

All 20 victims were French. The Pic de Bure observatory, which is atop the mountain at 8,887 feet, specializes in radio astronomy - the use of radio technology for space communication.

The bodies were taken down the mountain for identification and were "fairly badly damaged," Selaries said. They were to be placed in coffins and laid in the village church.

Mr. Simiand said the private lift consisted of one cable car with room for 20 passengers and another smaller one used to transport equipment.

Stunned local residents gathered Thursday afternoon at the town hall in the village of stone buildings surrounded by flower-covered meadows.

"We know most of the victims. The whole region is in shock," said Yvan Chaix, director of the local tourism office. "The accident is a surprise for all of us because the cable car was used daily by people at the observatory."

Until now, France's worst cable car accident came in 1989, when eight people died in the Isere region of the French Alps.

But cable car accidents have hit elsewhere in the Alps in recent years.

In February 1998, 20 people were killed when a U.S. Marine jet cut a cable of a ski lift, sending a gondola plunging to the ground near Cavalese, Italy.