A Kiwi woman who travelled to Italy for a skiing holiday says her trip quickly turned into a nightmare when she was nearly thrown out of her chairlift due to high winds.
Stephanie Burt, 48, says she and her friend have been left "traumatised" as a result of the ordeal, and they are calling on the Cervino ski resort to take accountability.
Burt was visiting the resort with her family and close friend when the 110km/h winds struck her chairlift.
Footage of the moment shared to Twitter shows several chairlifts being blown up in the wind and thrashed around, while one skier can be seen falling from his seat to the ground below.
Burt told MailOnline that the chairlift was deactivated five minutes into the journey, as the gusts began to intensify. She was in one cable car with her friend at the time.
"Our bottoms were off of the seats, we were holding onto the front bubble and literally swinging in midair," she recalled.
She said the lone skier in the chair behind her was "screaming" due to the winds whipping his seat.
"His screams were harrowing," Burt told MailOnline.
"It sounded like he was falling to his death. The fear of God was put into me in that lift. It was the most frightening experience of my life."
Burt said she thought about jumping from the lift at times to save her life and began wondering if she would see her two children again, aged nine and 11.
"We thought we were going to be knocked off and killed, and discussed if it would be better to have broken legs or a broken pelvis and be alive (from jumping off) rather than being knocked off," she said.
Burt has since vowed to never ski in Italy again, unless the resort tightens up its safety protocols.
"I don't feel there's any safety protocols in place whatsoever," she told MailOnline.
"There's been no communication, and nobody has checked if we're doing okay."
She claims bosses at the Cervino resort have failed to take her concerns about chairlift safety seriously.
A spokesperson for the ski resort told MailOnline they couldn't be contacted due to the Easter break.
