British Columbia’s Sea to Sky Gondola reopened again Friday, eight months after the popular tourist attractions cable was cut for a second time.
“You can’t really appreciate until you’ve seen it the depth of heart it takes do do something like this safely not once, but twice,” Sea to Sky Gondola general manager Kirby Brown told Global News.
“The sleepless nights wondering the how and the why we’re going to do it.”
An RCMP investigation remains underway into who sabotaged the gondola and why, but Mounties are keeping tight-lipped about its status.
The gondola’s main haul rope was deliberately cut on Sept. 14, in what police described as a deliberate act of vandalism, sending dozens of cabins crashing to the ground.
The same thing happened just 13 months prior.
“The first time I think the question was was this a vandal or a saboteur, did they get what they want?” Brown said.
“The second attack clearly answered that, that there is somebody that doesn’t want us to do what we do.”
Brown said the company remains in “surprisingly good shape” due to support from its bank, insurance company, owners and government bodies.
The attraction has installed 25 new gondola cabins from Switzerland, which will now be removed from the cable every night for safety.
It has also hired its own in-house security team.
Brown wouldn’t give details about how they were securing the site, but said the plan was world-leading.
“There is no other lift system that I have heard of anywhere on the planet that has the same level of security as we do,” he said.
“We’ve created something that truly is extraordinary and somewhat unheard of in industries outside of the nuclear space. So we’re prepared as anybody could possibly be, and that I can say with great confidence.”
B.C. safety regulators have confirmed the gondola’s 5.2-cm cable was deliberately cut in both recent incidents.
The company said a security officer who was on site during the second act was nearly killed. Its owners have posted a $250,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
No one has been arrested, and police have not speculated on a motive.