Mottarone cable car, Tadini: “They told me anyway go ahead”

“Nobody told me to go ahead with the braking system off, but they told me go ahead anyway.” Gabriele Tadini, the service manager of the Mottarone cable car, reconstructs in the minutes every detail of the morning of Sunday 23 May when cabin number 3 crashes and 14 tourists die. An accident due to the breaking of the hauling cable, for reasons yet to be ascertained, and for the voluntary blocking of the emergency braking system which causes the cabin to fall. Even on the morning of the accident, the system solves the problems that twice force Tadini to call the maintenance who intervenes but does not definitively solve the fault. “Basically in 20 days I called for assistance three times. To Perocchio (operating director and employee of Leitner who takes care of maintenance) I said that I was going ahead with the forks and he did not answer me. (…). that I would have gone on without an emergency system. I told Nerini (manager of the plant) on the phone that I would put the logs. Three times I told him “. That ‘everyone knew’ too general and not very detailed, together with the statements of the employees who deny Tadini, make the accusations against Perocchio and Nerini insufficient for which the judge did not validate the arrest. “On the occasion of the last request for assistance they knew that I would have risked closing “, says Tadini who confesses to having used the forks almost habitually in the last month. The third maintenance was scheduled before the disaster. “However, due to bad weather, the intervention had been postponed, and had never been carried out because the tragic event had occurred”, concludes Tadini, now under house arrest in his home in the province of Novara. to the chief prosecutor Olimpia Bossi and to the prosecutor Laura Carrera, he assumes the responsibility of having deactivated the emergency brake system, a stratagem to prevent the continuous blockages of the plant and therefore a possible long closure for maintenance. “I told Nerini that by now it was customary to deactivate the safety system. They told me to be arranged. The other employees knew they were traveling without safety systems.