Three tourists were one of four people who died when a cable car crashed south of Naples, Italy, including a British woman and an Israeli woman, an Italian official said on Friday.
Only two of the three foreign victims have been identified since the accident on Thursday, said Marco de Rosa, the spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense, where one of the deaths comes.
According to initial information, a traction cable broke and a car crashed after a cable car at the same time up and down when they crossed Monte Fais in the city of Castellamare Di Stagia. The accident occurred a week after the cable car, popular for its view of Mont Vésuve and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season.
Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into several guilty manslaughter and guilty catastrophe.
A fifth person, who is also a foreign tourist, was seriously injured and hospitalized in Naples, officials said. Sixteen passengers were helped from the other cable car which was stuck halfway near the foot of the mountain after the incident.
Italian alpine rescue, as well as more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection services worked on the site Thursday evening.
“The traction cable has broken. The emergency brake downstream has worked, but it is obviously that of the cabin entering the station,” said the mayor of Castellamare, Luigi Vicinanza on Thursday. He added that there had been regular security checks on the cable car line, which roamed three kilometers from the city at the top of the mountain.
The company says it has encountered security conditions
The company that directs the service, the EAV public transport firm, stressed that the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required security conditions.
“The reopening took place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night,” said EAV president Umberto de Gregorio. “It is something inexplicable.”
Investigators carried out checks on the functionality of the cable car and the possibility that the strong wind in recent days was among the causes of the accident.
A cable car accident in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, including a family of four. In 1998, an American low -flying military jet crossed the cable of a ski elevator in the Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.
