ROME (AP) — Three tourists were among four people who died when a cable car crashed south of Naples, including a British and an Israeli woman, an Italian official said 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 fatalities came from.
According to initial information, a traction cable snapped and one car crashed after both an upward and a downward-going cable cars came to a halt as they traversed Monte Faito in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The accident happened just a week after the cable car, popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season.
Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into multiple manslaughter and culpable disaster.
A fifth person, who is also believed to be a foreign tourist, was seriously injured and hospitalized in Naples, officials said. Sixteen passengers were helped out of the other cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.
Italy’s alpine rescue, along with over 50 firefighters, police and civil protection services worked on the site all Thursday night.
“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station,″ Castellammare Mayor Luigi Vicinanza said Thursday. He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line, which runs 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the town to the top of the mountain.
The company running the service, the EAV public transport firm, stressed that the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required safety conditions.
“The reopening had taken place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night,” said EAV President Umberto De Gregorio. “This is something inexplicable.”
Investigators were conducting checks on the functionality of the cable car and the possibility that strong wind in recent days was among the causes of the accident.
A cable car crash in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, among them a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying U.S. military jet cut through the cable of a ski lift in Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.
