A British couple were among the four people killed in a cable car crash near Naples, a city located in the southern region of Italy.
As learnt, the mountain cable car cabin plunged to the ground after one of the supporting cables snapped, resulting in the sudden death of four out of five passengers, who were boarded on it.
Among the deceased was the 59-year-old driver, Carmine Parlato, named by local officials, while the others are yet to be identified.
A fifth person in the cabin, according to Italian authorities, was “extremely seriously injured” in the crash and was airlifted to a nearby hospital for treatment.
According to the officials, sixteen people were rescued from a second cabin which was also on the line near the bottom of the valley at the time of the accident.
Reacting to the crash, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, where the cable car is located, stated that a snapped traction cable likely caused the tragic incident
“The emergency brake downstream worked but clearly not the one on the cabin that was about to reach the top of the hill,” he told Italian media on Thursday.
He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line which runs three kilometres from the town to the top of the mountain.
Meanwhile, the company which runs the service, EAV public transport firm, said the seasonal cable car had “reopened 10 days ago with all the required safety conditions”.
“What happened today is an unimaginable, unforeseeable tragedy,” EAV’s CEO Umberto de Gregorio said.
As part of efforts to uncover the mystery behind the incident, authorities in Torre Annunziata have meanwhile opened an investigation into the cause of the crash.
A similar accident on the line in 1960 left four people dead.
In 2021,14 people died when a cable car linking Lake Maggiore in Italy’s northern Piedmont region with a nearby mountain plummeted to the ground. The cause was determined to be a snapped cable and emergency brake failure.
