Whenever I get on a cable car, ski lift etc I always have to suppress the fear, and convince myself I am just being paranoid about the risks. I am trying to not read to many details of the disaster because I somehow relate to it more than when I read about a plane crash or ship sinking etc even though they are all extremely unlikely to happen to me.
My auntie texted me about an hour ago.
Piemonte, near Maggiore.
Awful.
I've been on that one a couple of times.
Think the Giro is due to go over Mottarone this coming week.
I'm sure statistically they are very safe, but can I convince myself that when they stop over a large drop onto rocks below? My heart goes out to those who've lost loved ones today, absolutely tragic.
Awful. If a cable or a support fails catastrophically I suppose it is only going to end one way, especially on a cable car.
On a gondola or a chairlift, if a cable break occurred further away along the cable, and there were towers between you and it, it might be new pants time, but not fatal. I don't want to test it.
Awful. Been on some absolute belters over the years where the drop is enormous, top of the Hintertux Glacier is memorable. As for chairs when you're midway between pylons and they start bungying...
Just as well my fear of cablecars and chairlifts is basically irrational or this'd make it worse...
(just googled to remind myself of the one at alpe d'huez that I had to sit on the floor so I coldn't see out the side, and it turns out that it had an accident that killed 8, glad I didn't know that...)
Junior was in a gonadola two behind one that fell off locally. Happily it was nearly there, fell only a metre, landed in deep snow which stopped it, no-one was injured. If it had fallen off a fraction earlier or not been held by the snow it would have rolled a long, long way.
One fatal lift accident I can recall in the resort, someone fell off a chair. However, the people killed on the road to the resort is in double figures, as is the tally of avalanche and crash on piste deaths.
Unfortunate, but far from the first time. 7 killed and 105 injured is the worst one locally at Luz Ardiden. A list:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_principaux_accidents_de_remont%C3%A9es_m%C3%A9caniques
I'm the same in cable cars, I have to keep reminding myself how safe they are statistically. The Lagazoi one in northern Italy was err, fun. It was also hit by a jet a few years before the Cavalese disaster apparently, or so the guide told us 😬
Poor buggers, my thoughts are with all their families
I would hate to have the responsibility of looking after cable cars/chairlifts. Constant year round use in arduous weather regions, extremes of temperature, lots of mechanical components with difficult access to some of them, lots of welded assemblies to check/test etc.
They do have good safety records considering the amount of people they transport.
Aiguille du Midi - did a few climbing routes on and around Mont Blanc du Tacul which meant using that one a few times - holy moly the fear climbing was nothing compared to the fear when it was 2 foot from the top, the cable seemed to be nearly vertical and you had 6000’ of space beneath you 🤢
RIP and sympathies to those affected - just tragic..
From the pictures last night, it looks like the traction cable has failed. It should, theoretically, have been fine as the rail cable is intact and the carriages have brakes which can be applied by the attendant, or automatically on over-speed. But something’s then caused it to derail, possibly as it’s slid over the pylon?
Truly horrific, my heart goes out to the victims, their families and those having to investigate this.
It's not quite the same but has anyone been on the old "coffin lifts" from Passo Sella to Forcella Sassolungo ?
They're truly frightening. The guards squeeze two people in them, then lock you in from behind. At the top you jump out of them backwards after they open the door for you. I can't imagine using one in winter as they are so small
What a horrible way to go. Thankfully these things are about as safe as you can get. Given how poorly Italy seems to manage the maintenance of its infrastructure I wouldn't be surprised if it was down to poor maintenance. Was only a few years since that road bridge collapsed.
Only scary cable car story I have was on a huge cable car that takes you out of Zermat and into the Cervinia ski area and takes you upto the Klein Matterhorn. A spectacular cable car that takes you over a huge glacier many hundreds of metres below you. We stopped right over the highest point over the glacier and the doors were trying to slide open, opening to reveal a few inches of gap before the safely locks prevented them from opening further. You can imagine those stood by the doors were a tad perplexed. We were packed in like sardines so they were not able to move away from the doors. We were stuck there for about 40 minutes and when we finally got going it took us about 4 attempts to dock properly into the station at the top. Not sure what was wrong but the cable car closed for the rest of the day after that ride. I was glad to get off. Having said that, that is the only problem I've experienced in over 20 years of skiing holiday's and thousands of rides on cable cars and chair lifts. They're pretty reliable.
Crikey - I can count on one hand the number of cable cars I've been in, that's one of them.
Utterly horrendous, the stuff of nightmares. 🙁
Thankfully these things are about as safe as you can get. Given how poorly Italy seems to manage the maintenance of its infrastructure I wouldn’t be surprised if it was down to poor maintenance.
Aren't those two sentences a contradiction in terms?
Given how poorly Italy seems to manage the maintenance of its infrastructure I wouldn’t be surprised if it was down to poor maintenance.
Everything in the place I went in the Dolomites (Sellardona area) seemed very well maintained and modern-looking to me.
OMG this is terrible.
Ah but that is the semi-autonomous SudTirol region and not the real Italy. They're very wealthy compared to the rest of the country.
Aren’t those two sentences a contradiction in terms?
No not at all. I never said 100% safe. Even if something is 99.9% safe then there will be a failure once in a while. The important thing is the root cause of the failure is established and changes made to make it impossible for the same cause to have the same outcome again. Cables just don't snap. Either something caused the cable to snap (like the military jet collision a few years ago) or it snapped because intervention didn't occur to identify something was wrong with the cable before it snapped - i.e. routine inspection and maintenance not carried out correctly, or at all.
My comment about the Italians authorities apparent blasé approach to safety came out of the road bridge collapse and the fact that safety is a culture and there seems to be an apparent lack of safety culture from the road bridge collapse findings. The question is how far does that poor safety culture extend and was it a factor here?
Awful news, especially the child who survived who would appear to have lost his parents and sibling...
What is bad here is that (from the news reports) it was a double failure, the pull rope clearly broke, but there are also emergency brakes either side of the main cable that are supposed to grip if the weighting load of the pull cable is removed. These have clearly failed.
Having gone skiing for my whole life I have been on many thousands of lift journeys, I hate to read something like this but the risk is small, probably lower that the car/bus journey up the mountain.
Would be interesting to know who built the lifts. Doppelmayr, Leitner, etc.... I think they're responsible for the upkeep and maintenance.
Not sure what is worse. Plummeting, a few seconds of panic and then death.
Or this.....
The first option is definitely worse. Everyone survived that Georgia lift incident. Still nightmarish though.
Only scary cable car story I have was on a huge cable car that takes you out of Zermat and into the Cervinia ski area and takes you upto the Klein Matterhorn. A spectacular cable car that takes you over a huge glacier many hundreds of metres below you. We stopped right over the highest point over the glacier and the doors were trying to slide open, opening to reveal a few inches of gap before the safely locks prevented them from opening further. You can imagine those stood by the doors were a tad perplexed. We were packed in like sardines so they were not able to move away from the doors. We were stuck there for about 40 minutes and when we finally got going it took us about 4 attempts to dock properly into the station at the top. Not sure what was wrong but the cable car closed for the rest of the day after that ride. I was glad to get off.
The Matterhorn Glacier Ride was replaced in 2018 - absolutely stunning.
https://www.snow-online.com/skimag/zermatt-builds-worlds-highest-3s-cableway.htm
Not a nice way to go. RIP 🙁
I've never been on a cable car and I have no plans to do so. I wouldn't even go on the one up Table Mountain in Cape Town.
A terrible accident 🙁 at least they weren't taken out by a US Marine Prowler this time.
Went on a fair few cable cars and gondolas, including this one, when I lived out there. Never got used to them. I’d regularly go up the mountain with my eyes shut.
The locals had no such having travelled on them since a toddler.
Given how poorly Italy seems to manage the maintenance of its infrastructure I wouldn’t be surprised if it was down to poor maintenance. Was only a few years since that road bridge collapsed.
I thought the road bridge was a fundamentally poor design, just a disaster waiting to happen. On a similar note, doesn't seem to take much for Chinese people to assume a building is about to collapse and hoof it.
@wobliscott - you said “as safe as can be”; find that incongruous with “... or it snapped because intervention didn’t occur to identify something was wrong with the cable before it snapped – i.e. routine inspection and maintenance not carried out correctly, or at all.”
We’ve had gondola and chairlift accidents in the UK. I can’t comment on the relative maintenance behind the scenes but on any for-profit scheme there is a risk of corner cutting and on any public-sector scheme there is a risk of budget cuts undermining critical safety.
They should be safe; but that doesn’t mean they are all equally safe.
Just been talking to Italian colleagues who are based in that region.
The story they’ve heard is that the gondola in question underwent maintenance recently and a locking pin was left in the emergency brake. There was a failure in another system and it should have automatically clamped to the cable to stay still, however the maintenance pin meant that it rolled back and jumped when it got to the pylon, then tumbled down the hill.
The story they’ve heard is that the gondola in question underwent maintenance recently and a locking pin was left in the emergency brake. There was a failure in another system and it should have automatically clamped to the cable to stay still, however the maintenance pin meant that it rolled back and jumped when it got to the pylon, then tumbled down the hill.
That's interesting - I wondered if it wasn't a failure of the haul rope that happened, rather than the support ropes. Horrible accident in any case.
The haul cable failed and the emergency brake should have activated on to the support cable, but the maintenance pin prevented it from actuating.
This is what my colleagues have told me.
I wondered if it wasn’t a failure of the haul rope that happened, rather than the support ropes.
Fairly sure I read that the haul rope failed, thought it was on this thread but must have been elsewhere
a locking pin was left in the emergency brake
This is the kind of thing that requires some kind of safety or tell tale. Really bad that this has happened if its the case.
This is the kind of thing that requires some kind of safety or tell tale.
(If of course this is the issue)
Indeed. It seems easy to create some kind of luminous colour and connected to something vital to stop it working type signal.
yeah, I also wonder if the lack of a working brake put the haul rope under too much stress, perhaps the brake comes on when the cars stop part way as they often do for "reasons" . A few months of no let up on the cable and it may be way beyond what its fatigue life was designed for (I'm straying into speculation and an area I have only a cursory knowledge of) .
alpin
Full MemberWould be interesting to know who built the lifts. Doppelmayr, Leitner, etc…. I think they’re responsible for the upkeep and maintenance.
Only if contracted to do so. There'll be a warranty period just like everything else in life, however maintenance and upkeep is for the operator to organise (which of course could be with the OEM)
It often takes more than one failing to make a disaster, maintenance pin left in emergency brake + haul cable snapping. How often do they snap, not often I bet. Maybe the maintanace pin put brakes ON straining cable and destroying brakes. Anyway a terrible event.
Friday's Giro stage has been slightly modified to avoid the accident area but still passing through Stresa.
https://www.giroditalia.it/en/news/stage-19-of-the-giro-ditalia-2021-new-route/
The fenicular disaster in Kaprun was also a very serious accident with loss of life. Watched a documentary on youtube very little safety systems / redundancy in place.
The Kaprun disaster gives me the the shivers. This cable car one seems shocking as it just shouldn’t happen. There will have been checks and processed for exactly what went wrong ( whatever it was) yet it still failed.
Jeezo, how sad ☹
It's interesting that the tendency by officials and local government to find someone to blame - usually only seen in backwards countries - is so prevalent in Italy. The same thing happened after the bridge collapse, where people were arrested and charged within days.
Not only does this defeat the point of finding out why something happened and preventing it from happening again, it implies that had the authorities enforced the law correctly regarding safety in the first place these accidents would never have happened.
One wonders if this is exactly why people have been arrested - to distract from the failure of oversight of local government.
Indeed, the governance looks shonky, but "patchwork repair" aren't the sort of words you want to hear applied to things like cable-cars.
it implies that had the authorities enforced the law correctly regarding safety in the first place these accidents would never have happened.
I don't see it that way. If people deliberately disable emergency brakes, oversight isn't going to make much difference - you can't inspect every piece of machinery every time it's serviced. Instead, you set standards and hold people accountable for maintaining them. This was a deliberate, premeditated action, not a crime of passion. By punishing these guys, you are aiming to deter other people from taking similar shortcuts.
If people deliberately disable emergency brakes,
There are two possibilities here:
1) Someone accidently left the brake in the service condition, this is a mistake and is probably systemic. The parts and service should be designed so that it is impossible to operate with the brake in the service condition. I am not convinced arrests should feature in that case. By the rationale set put above regarding investigations etc.
2) Someone sabotaged the cable car to cause an accident, or someone disabled the brake as it was causing operational issues (like landlords disabling troublesome fire alarms). Yes make arrests.
BBC are reporting that 3 people in charge of running the cable car apparently aware the emergency brakes have been disabled for weeks. Stops sounding so much like an "accident" and more the predictable consequences resulting from a set of human choices.
. Stops sounding so much like an “accident” and more the predictable consequences resulting from a set of human choices.
Oh god, how terribly irresponsible.
"Carabinieri Lieutenant Colonel Alberto Cicognani told Italian state television the three people had admitted to their involvement in the work carried out on the cable car during questioning overnight.
He said the fork-shaped clamp was placed on the brake to prevent it from engaging because it had been braking spontaneously and preventing the cable car from working.
He said the clamp was put on several weeks ago as a temporary fix to prevent further interruptions.
The cable car line went back into service on April 26 after a winter coronavirus-linked shutdown."
On Sunday, the braking mechanism on the wire bearing the weight of the cabin failed to engage and the gondola slid backwards before apparently hitting a pylon and tumbling to earth, where it rolled down the steep slope before hitting trees."
Sugegsting that a fault with a safety system was identified and not corrected. Instead, it was botched so they could operate. Also in other news, the corresponding car on the other side, had the braking system activated as intended when the haul rope failed....
There are two possibilities here:... someone disabled the brake as it was causing operational issues (like landlords disabling troublesome fire alarms). Yes make arrests.
This is exactly what happened. The brake was malfunctioning and preventing operation so they deliberately disabled it.
Jeepers this is petrifying thinking about the trust people put in these operators.
Also in other news, the corresponding car on the other side, had the braking system activated as intended when the haul rope failed…
I hadn't thought of that. The two cars are semi-balanced so the haul rope failing releases both. So the passengers in the other car must have had to be rescued after it braked - but must be feeling lucky.
Deliberately disabling a safety mechanism to continue operating should be treated as seriously as murder.