On Wednesday, young men who had been rescued from a cable vehicle that had been stuck above a deep gorge in Pakistan for more than 12 hours walked to school to pick up their test results.
Eight people, including six students, were rescued on Tuesday as night fell in the isolated Allai valley in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province by military helicopters and local zipline specialists.
Three of them were scheduled to pick up their end-of-year exam results as they regularly rode the chairlift to school when two of the three wires broke.
“When this incident happened, I forgot everything. All I remembered at that time was my mother and God,” said 18-year-old Niaz Muhammad from Pashto village.
Before seeking additional medical examinations, the three kids trekked two hours to school on a difficult terrain on Wednesday to learn they had passed their tests.
Some of the passengers told AFP that they had thought about jumping from the chairlift multiple times when they had given up hope of ever being saved.
“Some of the children were so frustrated and were considering to jump down, but the elder passenger gave us confidence,” 15-year-old Rizwan Ullah told AFP.
“When the cable car was twisting, we were terrified and we started reciting the Koran and gave confidence to each other not to jump down.”
Helicopters flew repeated sorties over the cable car throughout the afternoon as they planned the rescue mission.
At one point an airman was lowered to deliver food and water, but the air pressure from the helicopter caused him to collide with a rope holding the cable car, causing it to twist and shake.
“When the helicopter arrived and left without rescue we lost hope,” said 25-year-old Gul Faraz, a shopkeeper who was in the cable car
“During the whole process we thought we would die. There were some times when we thought we would not survive.”
