Tragedy on the Mottarone, the investigations

The cable car had finished its run, there were a few meters to go. The crash left 14 deaths. The Prosecutor of Verbania will now try to shed light on what happened yesterday, the fall of the cabin of the Stresa-Mottarone line. “The whole area has been seized and we will appoint technicians to ascertain the causes of the accident,” said prosecutor Olimpia Bossi. “For now we are proceeding for multiple manslaughter and negligent injuries, then we must also verify the case of culpable crimes of attack on transport safety, also based on the public nature or otherwise of the plant”. It will also be necessary to establish whether the cable has broken or released: “It is not an assessment that can be done immediately, it will be necessary to carry out technical checks”. The victims 14 were killed, including a 9-year-old child, while another 5-year-old was injured. The condition of the oldest appeared immediately very serious: in the collision he suffered a bad head trauma, a thoracic trauma and fractures to the limbs and he “died after a few hours from a cardiac arrest from which we were no longer able to recover”, he explained the general director of the City of Health of Turin, Giovanni La Valle, together with Fabrizio Gennari, director of pediatric surgery. The five-year-old boy, who arrived by helicopter at the Children’s Hospital, arrived conscious from a first examination and reported various traumas including to the skull, chest to abdomen and lower limb fracture. “Now we will continue to work on the second child to do everything we can to save him,” added La Valle. “We are working hard to keep it stable and be able to have a good result”, observed Gennari. The dynamics of the tragedy The cable car fell for “15-20 meters, then rolled for a few tens of meters and stopped against two logs of trees ”, explains Giorgio Santacroce, lieutenant colonel of the operative unit of the Carabinieri of Verbania. The accident took place just before 12 and the impact was devastating to the point that some bodies would have been thrown and found a few meters away from the sheared cable. 2016 after two years of maintenance and modernization works, entrusted to the Leitner company. The reopening of the cable car was inaugurated on 13 August 2016 and the relative reference stations of the cable car were also renovated between October-December 2016. A choice to close not without uncertainties given the longevity of the infrastructure. Work on the cable car that connects Stresa and the top of Mottarone started in 1963 to replace the old railway route dated 1911, complete with an Art Nouveau station, with a new, more functional and faster system. The work, entrusted to the Piedmont Funivie company, went on for a few years until the plant was inaugurated on 1 August 1970. In 2002 the cable car was subjected to an extraordinary overhaul carried out by the company Poma Italia (now Agudio). In 2009, to complete the work, a two-seater chairlift was built by the Leitner company that from the arrival station of the cable car to Mottarone leads to the cross at the top of the mountain (1491 m asl), to the ski slopes and to Alpyland, a new amusement area built in 2010, and consisting of an alpine coaster (bobsleigh on rails). The cable car is structured in two sections, each with two cabins with a capacity of 35 people. The first section of the cable car starts at 205 m in Lido di Carciano, in Stresa and reaches the Alpine area, where the Alpinia botanical garden is located. The second section starts at 803 m of the Alpino and reaches a plateau immediately below the summit of Mottarone, located at 1385 m, from this position it is possible to reach 1491 m on foot or with a chairlift built in 2009. “Checks, checks , maintenance are all in place. Then what happened is all to be verified “, said the lawyer Pasquale Pantano, defender of the company that manages the Mottarone cable car, speaks after the accident. The plant is apparently owned by the Municipality of Stresa.