Italy seeks responsibility for cable car crash that killed 14 people
The public prosecutor's office in Verbania, northern Italy, is investigating the causes and responsibilities for the fall of the cable car connecting the towns of Stresa and Mottarone, in the Piedmont region, which caused the death of fourteen people, including three children, while another five-year-old is in a critical condition.
The investigations, for the crime of multiple intentional homicide, will focus on the detachment of a cable, but also on why the emergency brake in the cab did not work.
"These are all assumptions, but I think there was a double problem: the cable breakage and the failure of the emergency brake. We don't know why it didn't activate while the cabin was descending on the cable," Matteo Gasparini, the provincial head of Alpine Rescue, told the media.
"The cable broke and the safety brake system did not work because then the cabin would have been blocked. The object of the investigation will focus on understanding why this happened," confirmed Olimpia Bossi, chief prosecutor of Verbania, who is coordinating the investigation into the cable car accident.
Bossi added that "the complete and exhaustive overview of all the legal persons who, in various ways, are interested in the management or review of the cable car" will also be studied, the prosecutor said, as the Piedmont region ceded ownership to the municipality of Stresa.
He also alluded to the maintenance managers and those who carried it out, as the last review was in November 2020 and was positive.
"The investigations will take their course, but now the institutions have a duty to support the people affected by this tragedy, now the human side must predominate'", said the mayor of Stresa, Marcella Severino, after meeting with the infrastructure minister, Enrico Giovannini, whose portfolio has set up an inspection commission to "identify the technical and organisational causes" of the accident.
Meanwhile, the state of health of five-year-old Eitan Biran, who is hospitalised in a serious condition and is the only survivor of the family of Israeli origin after the death in the accident of his father, mother, brother and two of his grandparents, is being closely monitored.
