Woman trapped 15 hours overnight in gondola at Lake Tahoe's Heavenly Ski Resort
A woman was trapped in a freezing ski lift gondola at a Lake Tahoe resort for 15 hours overnight.
Monica Laso kept herself warm after she was stuck in the gondola amid freezing temperatures by rubbing her arms and feet, KCRA 3 reported.
In an interview in Spanish with KCRA 3, Laso said she was on a skiing trip with her friends at Heavenly Ski Resort on Thursday when she became too tired to go down the hill.
Laso approached a worker who guided her to the gondola and she got on board at around 4:58 p.m.. Just two minutes later, the gondola stopped, leaving her stranded alone and scared without a phone or light.
All she could do was scream out for help every time she saw an employee below, but no one could hear her.
"I screamed desperately until I lost my voice," Laso told KCRA 3.
After not being able to reach her on Thursday, Laso’s friends reported her missing to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.
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Discovered the next morning
The Los Angeles Times reported that at around 8:30 a.m. on Friday, the South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue got a call about a woman suffering from cold exposure at Heavenly Mountain Resort.
South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Spokesperson Sallie Ross told the LA Times the resort staff discovered Laso had been in the gondola all night after they had started the lift back up for the day.
The area had a low temperature of 23 degrees that night.
In a statement to USA TODAY, Tom Fortune, chief operating officer of Heavenly Mountain Resort. said the resort was "investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness.”
“The safety and wellbeing of our guests is our top priority at Heavenly Mountain Resort," Fortune said.
Firefighters arrived at the scene and treated Laso, who declined to be taken to a hospital, Ross said to the LA Times.
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Incident is an 'anomaly'
“It sounds like she wasn’t injured or anything, but she definitely didn’t have a great night, that’s for sure," Ross told the outlet.
Ross called the incident an anomaly and told the LA Times that the department “certainly never responded to anything like this,” before.
“I don’t know how something like that could have happened. It’s very weird,” Ross said. “She must have felt some kind of terror, really, knowing she’s there all alone and not knowing if someone was going to find her. That must have really been terrifying for her.”