Monte Faito, cable car falls: 4 dead. Investigation for disaster and manslaughter

Hours of anguish, with rescue operations complicated by the fog, and that cabin upstream of the Faito plant of which there is no more news, fuelling fears of a tragedy as time passed. Until the tragic epilogue, with hope thwarted by the news that arrived: 4 dead and one seriously injured were the toll of the accident on Monte Faito where, due to a broken cable, a cabin of the funicular that connects Castellammare di Stabia, in the province of Naples, with the summit, a breathtaking panorama 1.100 metres over the beauty of the Gulf, crashed to the ground dragging five people with it, two foreign tourist couples and the driver on board, Carmine Parlato, an Eav employee. Two of the victims were British, the third an Israeli national.

The only survivor was a woman, who was taken by helicopter to the Ospedale del Mare in Naples. The nine passengers who boarded the cabin on the way down were unharmed, as it remained suspended in the air some 20 metres above the ground until rescuers arrived. In their case, the safety brake worked, preventing worse trouble. The accident happened just after 2.30 p.m.. Breaking the news of the disaster was the managing director of Eav, the Ente Autonomo del Volturno that runs the cable car, Umberto De Gregorio: 'The cabin upstream has fallen. Casualties are feared,' the post on social media that arrived shortly after 6pm that dashed all hope. Preceded a few minutes earlier by the announcement: 'A tragedy'.

The tourist facility - after being closed for the winter - had reopened for the summer season only about ten days ago. The rescue machine moved in good time, but the search for the only missing person was complicated by the bad weather and the blanket of fog on the summit of Faito, on the very day on which the Civil Protection declared a yellow weather alert starting at 2 p.m. for the risk of thunderstorms. Asked if the conditions were right for the cableway to operate regularly, De Gregorio replied: 'We have a very good manager. Sometimes it closes in the presence of strong winds, evidently today he felt that the conditions were not such as to impose a stop".

In tears the wife of the operator on board the cabin that crashed, who was among the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy. Torre Annunziata prosecutor Nunzio Fragliasso was also at the scene: "We are in the preliminary investigation phase," he said, announcing the opening of a file against unknown persons. Crimes of negligent disaster and multiple culpable homicide are being hypothesised. The investigation was entrusted to the State Police. The Minister of Transport, Matteo Salvini, announced a thorough report on the accident. "The objective," a MIT note explained, "is to investigate all aspects of the affair and ascertain any responsibility" as quickly as possible.

The history of the Faito cable car is not new to accidents. The most serious dates back to the Ferragosto del 1960 when, due to human error, one of the cabins reached the valley without being able to brake its course, thus falling onto the tracks below the Circumvesuviana railway line: even then, four people died, with 31 injured. After that tragedy, the plant underwent several modernisation works. More recently, it was closed for work for four years until its latest reopening in 2016. Popular with tourists, the cable car recorded 108,000 passengers last year.