Here is an official update from Whistler Blackcomb on their Doppelmayr/Garaventa gondolas, from early this morning:

Whistler Mountain will open for regular morning operations as early as 7:30am, as the Whistler Village Gondola and the Creekside Gondola are different types of lift installations and have different tower structures. Remaining Whistler Mountain lifts as well as Blackcomb Mountain lifts are expected to open when the secondary inspection by BCSA is complete. The one exception is the Excalibur Gondola, which will remain closed.

Twenty maintenance staff inspected the lifts last night and concluded that the Excalibur Gondola tower failed due to a leak. Water entered the tower, turned to ice and expanded between two parts that were spliced together, causing the structure to rupture. This is apparently known as “ice-jacking” (cyclic incremental movement by ice leading to failure from microcrack propagation).

“As always, our top priority is for the safety and well-being of our resort guests and employees,” says Doug Forseth, senior vice president of operations. “Whistler Blackcomb will delay opening some of our lifts this morning until the BCSA can confirm our findings and provide a secondary inspection. After the work conducted throughout last night by our own lift maintenance team, and a secondary inspection that will be completed this morning by the BCSA, access to both Whistler and Blackcomb is expected to be available by midday.”

Two cabins actually hit the ground and twelve people out of 53 on the gondolas were taken to the Whistler Medical Clinic. All were released soon after.

No word yet from the BC Safety Authority on whether joints on towers will be subjected to regular X Ray inspections, as that probably would have detected a faulty weld and the ice-jacking.

A story in The Register about Brazilian hackers, pointed out in Bruce’s blog, brings new meaning to log management:

Some Brazilian states used a computerised allocation system to levy how much timber can be logged in each area. However, logging firms attempted to subvert these controls by hiring hackers to break systems and increase the companies’ allocations.

Greenpeace reckons these types of computer swindles were responsible for the excess export of 1.7 million cubic metres of timber (or enough for 780 Olympic-sized swimming pools, as the group helpfully points out) before police broke up the scam last year. Brazilian authorities are suing logging firms for 2 billion reais (US$833m).

And now the Brazilian states will need to install new controls from logging companies to keep track of the logging companies. Ha ha.

An old Excaliber Gondola tower collapsed at Whistler today:

At least a dozen passengers are trapped inside two gondolas after a tower partially collapsed at Canada’s Whistler ski resort on Tuesday.

Police said there were no serious injuries, but the passengers are stranded as emergency officials work out a plan to evacuate them from the gondolas on the Excalibur lift.

I wonder if anyone will get a discount or refund on lift tickets. This is not the new Peak-to-Peak, but it is an important lift and must give people the jitters. It also may shutdown access to key parts of the mountain while other lifts are inspected.

The Leader Post has images of the tower that failed. It looks like it snapped in half, leaving one of the gondolas hanging just six feet off the ground. Another gondola is suspended over a creek.

EPIC has posted some insights into the history of the US Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and why privacy protections for personal information succeeded despite opposition from the banking industry:

Critical support for the Markey Amendment came from Representative Joe Barton (R-TX). Barton expressed concern that his credit union had sold his address to Victoria’s Secret. Representative Barton noted that he started receiving Victoria’s Secret catalogs at his Washington home. This was troubling—he didn’t want his wife thinking that he bought lingerie for women in Washington, or that he spent his time browsing through such material.

Barton explained that he maintained an account in Washington for incidental expenses, but used it very little. Neither he nor his wife had purchased anything from Victoria’s Secret at the Washington address. Barton smelled a skunk; he reasoned that since he spent so little money in Washington, his credit union was the only business with his address. Barton believed that he should be able to stop financial institutions from selling personal information to third parties, and supported the Markey Amendment. Congress enacted the bill, and now individuals have the right to direct financial institutions not to sell personal information to third parties.

I guess we can say thank you to Victoria’s Secret for putting fear into the heart of the American congress. Financial loss did not seem to bother them, guns and ammo magazines probably never even raised an eyebrow, but one lingerie catalog to a representative from Texas and the bi-partisan privacy advocacy movement was set in motion. Note that Markey was considered a liberal of Massachusetts while Barton was a conservative Texan.