Three tourists were among four people who died when a cable car fell south of Naples, Italy, including a British and an Israeli woman, an Italian official said on Friday.
Since the accident on Thursday, only two of the three foreign victims have been identified, said Marco de Rosa, the spokesman for the Mayor of Vico Soquense, where one of the deaths came from.
According to the initial information, a traction cable grabbed and a car fell to a standstill after the upward and downward cable car when she crossed Monte Faito in the city of Castellammare di Stabia. The accident occurred just a week after the cable car, which was popular for the view of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, again for the season.
Italian prosecutors have opened an examination of several manslaughter and culpable disaster.
A fifth person, from whom she is also assumed that she is a foreign tourist, was seriously injured in Naples and hospitalized, officers said. Sixteen passengers were helped from the other cable car that is in the middle of the air at the foot of the mountain after the incident.
Italy’s alpine rescue as well as more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection services worked on Thursday evening.
“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake worked downstream, but obviously not the one in the cabin that entered the train station,” said Castellammare Mayor Luigi Vicinanza on Thursday. He added that there were regular security controls on the cable car line, which drives three kilometers from the city to the top of the mountain.
Company says it has fulfilled the security conditions
The company, which led the service, the EAV public transport company, emphasized that the seasonal cable car was reopened with all the necessary safety conditions.
“The reopening had taken place every day, day and night a week ago after three months ago,” said EAV President Umberto de Gregorio. “This is something inexplicable.”
The investigators conducted checks on the functionality of the cable car and the possibility that strong wind has been one of the causes of the accident in the past few days.
In a cable car accident in Northern Italy in May 2021, 14 people were killed, including six Israelis, including a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying US military beam cut through the cable of a ski lift on cavalese in the Dolomites and killed 20 people.
