ROME — Three tourists were among four people who were killed when a mountain cable car plunged into a ravine south of Naples, an Italian official said Friday.
A British woman and an Israeli woman were among the three foreign victims identified since Thursday’s accident, said Marco De Rosa, the spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense. The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car.
Initial reports suggest that a cable car crashed while going up Monte Faito, in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The reports suggested that a traction cable may have snapped. The cable car plunged into a ravine after stopping very close to the station at the top of the peak, at around 1,050 meters.
A fifth person, believed to be a second Israeli tourist, was in stable but critical condition at the Naples hospital treating him, officials said. Sixteen passengers were helped out of another cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.
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. It averages around 110,000 visitors each year.
Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter, which will involve an inspection of the cable stations, the pylons, the two cabins and the cable, officials said Friday,
The emergency services, including Italy’s alpine rescue, more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection personnel, worked into the evening in severe weather conditions, with fog and strong winds making rescue operations difficult.
“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station,” Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, said on 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.”
De Gregorio said technical experts believed there was no connection between the severe weather and the cause of the crash. “There is an automatic system. When the wind exceeds a certain level, the cable car stops automatically,” he said.
The Monte Faito cable car opened in 1952. Four people died in 1960 when a pylon broke.
Italy has recorded two similar fatal accidents involving cable cars in recent years.
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.
