Four people were killed and a injured this Thursday, April 17, in the fall of a cable car cabin in the Naples region, in southern Italy. “Four lifeless bodies were found while a fifth injured person was rescued and transported to the hospital”said firefighters on Telegram, adding that “More than 50” of them were engaged in rescue operations. It is a final assessment.
An investigation was opened by the local prosecutor’s office and many political leaders expressed their sadness after this tragedy. “The cable car has reopened ten days ago with all the security conditions required by the regulations. What happened today is an unimaginable, unpredictable tragedy, on which of course must be clarified ”, said Umberto de Gregorio, the president of the cable car manager.
The head of the Giorgia Meloni government, traveling to Washington where she met President Donald Trump earlier in the evening, wished “Express on behalf of the Italian government and on its personal name, its proximity and its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the wounded”according to a press release from its services.
Four tourists and a guide were in the cabin of this cable car, which links the city of Castellammare Di Stabia, in the Gulf of Naples, at Mont Fais over a distance of almost three kilometers. The accident occurred following the breakdown of a cable, when a cabin with sixteen passengers was very close to the city and the ground, while a second cabin was at Mont Faiso above a precipice.
-The sixteen passengers of the first cabin were all quickly rescued, but bad weather and the fog at altitude prevented passengers from the second cabin urgently. Firefighters are now looking to safely put this second cabin, to prevent it from slipping towards the valley and causes other damage.
This cable car was inaugurated in 1952 and so far a single accident had been recorded, in 1960, when a cabin fell to the ground causing the death of four people.
In May 2021, a similar accident had killed fourteen and two seriously injured in Stresa, a seaside resort of Piedmont on the banks of Lake Major, in northern Italy. About twenty years earlier, on February 3, 1998, an American military plane at NATO cut a cable cable in a ski resort in the Italian Alps, in Cavalese. A cabin had been rushed into the void and crashed some 110 meters below, killing its 20 occupants.
Update : April 17 at 9:37 p.m., add the consolidated assessment; at 10:05 p.m. Addition of context.
