TRAGEDY was averted in KP’s Battagram area on Tuesday when eight individuals, mostly children, were rescued after the wires of their cable car snapped high above the ground.

While all those involved in the daring rescue effort deserve much praise for saving lives, the incident highlights the need for better, safer infrastructure in remote locations such as Allai, where the event occurred, to facilitate citizens.

The occupants of the cable car were travelling to school when the accident happened, leaving them dangling precariously several hundred feet above a river. Combined efforts lasting around 14 hours involving military personnel, rescue workers, and locals were ultimately successful.

While earlier attempts to retrieve the stranded occupants of the car by helicopter saw only limited success, rescuers continued the operation after nightfall and brought the terrifying saga to a close by safely retrieving all the occupants after putting their own lives at risk by sliding down the remaining cables.

Such feats are often witnessed in the movies, but these real-life heroes deserve the nation’s gratitude for their selflessness and bravery in the face of an extremely challenging situation.

The event should prompt the state to resolve the communication issues of communities living in remote areas with difficult terrain, like Allai. In fact, due to limited infrastructure including roads and bridges, such cable cars are often the only practical option for travelling in parts of the mountainous north, especially in KP, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Kashmir.

While safety features may leave much to be desired — many cable cars are built by locals on a self-help basis — this form of aerial transport is a lifeline for residents of remote valleys and hamlets.

They cut both travel time and cost, as a road journey taking hours and costing a few thousand rupees can be made in a few minutes for very little money. But the threat of an accident is ever-present, as Tuesday’s episode showed. In 2017, a similar accident in Murree resulted in several deaths.

Critical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, is needed to connect settlements in remote places. But if this is too expensive, cable car systems built and manned by professionals can be installed, with bodies like Rescue 1122 and PDMA, KP, hiring trained cable car rescuers in hilly areas such as Battagram, Shangla, Kohistan, and Chitral for prompt response.

The respective local administrations must ensure that safety inspections of such structures are an ongoing process. Moreover, the state needs to provide basic facilities such as schools, clinics, etc. closer to people’s settlements so that they do not have to traverse long distances and treacherous terrain to get an education or visit the doctor. Better telecommunications infrastructure can also facilitate online learning and telemedicine in remote communities.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2023