There are the first suspects, the first arrested in the investigation into the tragedy of Mottarone cableway.
Just two days after the accident that cost the lives of 14 people and at the end of a decisive day for a significant part of the investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office of Verbania – with a rapid and sensational turnaround – enters some names in the register of suspects assuming the crimes of multiple manslaughter, very serious injuries and culpable disaster.
And places the catch for Luigi Nerini, director of the Ferrovie del Mottarone company that manages the cable car; Gabriele Tadini, director of the service, ed Enrico Perocchio, chief operating officer. In the words of the prosecutor, Olimpia Bossi, they knew that the cabin traveled without brakes. And they knew it from 26 April. According to the investigators, therefore it was not a fatality. Or at least, not only that.
“They admitted, failure ignored for money”
The decision came after the round of interrogations, which continued until the early hours of the day in the Stresa carabinieri barracks.
The prosecutor, at 4.10 am, explained that the suspects were “materially aware” that the cabin was traveling without brakes since April 26, the day of the reopening. «Was the brake not activated voluntarily? Yes, yes, they admitted it, ”said Lieutenant Colonel Alberto Cicognani in the morning.
The analysis of the finds allowed the investigators who investigate the accident at the Mottarone cable car to ascertain that “The crashed cabin had the emergency brake system tampered with”.
And in particular, it made it possible to ascertain that the “Fork” – or the device that allows you to deactivate the brake: A spreader that keeps the brake shoes apart which should block the carrier cable in case of breakage of the towing cable – and has not been removed.
A “materially conscious” gesture to “avoid disruptions and blockages of the cable car. The system presented anomalies and would have needed a more radical intervention with a substantial if not prolonged block ».
Those technical interventions – explained the prosecutor – had been “requested and carried out”, one on May 3, but “had not been decisive and it was decided to remedy”: “in the belief that a break in the cable could never occur, the risk was taken which unfortunately led to the fatal outcome ».
What the prosecutor calls a “very disconcerting” choice was pursued in order to avoid an adequate repair of the braking system that probably would have led to a long closure of the plant, whose coffers had already been severely tested by the lockdown.
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The hypothesis
To break the “pulling” cable of the Mottarone cableway, to make the cabin run without brakes for hundreds of meters at over 100 per hour until it falls into the void for over 50 meters crashing to the ground was a concomitance of several factors, as always happens in accidents.
It’s still unclear why the steel rope broke, but if the cabin didn’t stop immediately as it should, that’s why someone has disabled at least one of the two emergency brakes blocking it (as a photo of the wreckage shows, the other could have jumped into the disaster) with a “fork”. And this can only be due to “human error”.
Because the accident happened just around 12 on Sunday, when the cable car had already done a few runs between Stresa and the Mottarone, will be the consultations that will be arranged in the next few hours by the prosecutor of Verbania Olimpia Bossi and by the prosecutor Laura Carrera to explain it, specifying whether an external factor intervened or if the cable was damaged.
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Stresa-Mottarone cable car accident: the latest news
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The maintenance
In both cases, rope and brakes, the investigators say that “the key is in maintenance».
Both the periodic one, which is entrusted to the Leitner, a leading company in cableways (the latest brake inspections are on May 3rd), and that made on its behalf by Sateco of Turin and is that performed by the employees of the Mottarone railways.
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