MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Hundreds of people were stranded at the top of a Canadian mountain Monday night after a thunderstorm knocked out power to gondolas that moved them from the top to the bottom.
Among them was a family from Miami Beach.
All of the tourists were forced to spend the night on top of the mountain in Banff, Alberta.
“There was a lot of lightning, there was rain. You could tell the weather wasn’t good,” said Suzanne Salas.
Salas and her family took cellphone video of people scattered on the floor inside of a museum where they spent the night.
“In the morning, search and rescue, I guess they had hiked up, they started counting people to get a sense of how many people were up there, and it ended up being 600 by the way,” Salas said.
Her children were given emergency blankets and, like many others, they slept on the floor.
“We got up there at 6 p.m. and started walking down at 8 a.m.,” she said.
After 10 hours, Salas and her family decided to hike the three miles down the mountain in the morning.
Tourists who couldn’t walk were rescued by helicopter.
Banff is a popular tourist destination with as many as 4 million visitors each summer.
According to Salas, they were offered food throughout the night and a full refund for what happened.