Saint-Etienne-Endevoluy - Investigators in a small French Alpine village yesterday began picking over the shattered remains of the Pic de Bure cable car which plunged 80 m, killing all 20 people aboard.
With the grim work of removing the bodies completed overnight, the authorities turned to trying to work out what went wrong and caused France's worst cable car disaster.
The observatory served by the cable car was isolated by Thursday's crash. The village mayor, Mr Jean-Marie Bernard, said it would reopen on Monday with scientists ferried back and forth by helicopter.