5 Hurt in Terrifying Tahoe Ski Lift Collision

Five people were injured in a terrifying mishap on a ski lift at a Lake Tahoe ski resort two days before Christmas. Monday morning at Heavenly, a resort on the California-Nevada border, two chairs on the Comet Express lift collided, and witnesses reported seeing some people fall from the lift. "The chair slid backwards with people on it into the chair behind it," one witness tells CNN. Other witnesses report seeing at least one person on the second chair pinned by the first. Witnesses say neither chair had the safety bar lowered. The victims were transported to a nearby hospital, and their conditions were not disclosed, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports.

Pictures that were said to be of the incident were posted on Reddit. "A malfunctioning chair has always been a nightmare of mine, and to witness it is even worse," says another witness who spoke to CNN, who described sleds taking victims down the mountain, at least one of them on oxygen. "It was not good at all." The first witness notes the victims were "lucky this happened at the very beginning of the lift" before they were taken even higher into the air. The Comet Express, in operation since 1988, is the oldest detachable lift at the resort. (Last season, another terrible incident at Heavenly.)