Tram fire a danger in many ways

Just 100 yards from the Palm Springs aerial tramway, fire burned Tuesday afternoon.

“At first it didn’t look like that much but when we boarded the tram to come back down there was a lot more to it than it seemed up there,” Scott Gire said.

Understandably disappointed visitors from all over the world got turned away- or had to cut their trip short. The fire brought a lot of danger with it. Not only because safety for people up top was at least a 10 minute ride away.

“The people that just got off the tram had to come right back through the gate and come right back down to the bottom,” Bret Meinders said.

Not just because the flames burned dangerously close to the famous tourist attraction.

By Tuesday night, blackness crept up the mountain – at an area the U.S. Forest Service said is a fire fighter’s worst nightmare.

“This is the steepest and rockiest terrain we have on the San Bernardino National Forest. That’s what’s going to make containing the fire rather difficult. Firefighters will have to get up there and cut Fire line,” John Miller of the U.S. Forest Service said.

In some areas it is almost vertical.

“You’re working in steep terrain where you have the opportunity to slip, fall or get hit with a rock,” Miller said.

The cause is still being investigated. We’re told it started at the employee parking lot.

The tram will open back up Wenesday morning at 10 am.